Willpower of Fire
by Vash Eater
Summary: Naruto... Hated child of Konoha realizes that to get ahead as a ninja, he needs to change his identity and start with a clean slate. Follows loose cannon later on but for now, more realistic ninja life. Smart/Cunning Naruto, Early Graduation, Eventual Hokage fic. eventual NarutoxHanaInuzuka, rated M for realism of ninja life.
1. Chapter 1

Naruto - Willpower of Fire

Notes:

-This is my first fanfic, so forgive me for all the beginning troubles. I'll try to avoid the common cliches but some of them are just unavoidable.

-This will be a smart Naruto fic but not a smartASS Naruto fic.

-It will eventually be Naruto/Female pairing, but not until later and I am currently undecided.

-Harems ruin Fanfics, so that will not be happening. Seriously I have read thousands of fanfics and have yet to come across a single good completed story with a harem.

-Money: 1 ryo = 10 yen (Jap) = 10 cents (USD)

-I'm playing it a bit fast and loose with the character ages, for now Naruto is much older than the other Konoha 11, in fact, he is 1.1 years older than Itachi. He is 7 years older than cannon age.

-His birthday and the Kyuubi attack is being moved to the Spring

Chapter 1

"Get out of here, Freak."

Naruto gazed at the librarian with a detached look on his face. This sort of behavior from the villagers was nothing new. For his entire seven year life he had known only apathy at best and outright scorn at worst from the villagers in Konoha.

Naruto sighed and placed the book down as he left to exit the library, knowing that there was no way he would convince the librarian to let him stay and read. For the last year, Naruto had taken to sneaking in to the library so he could read the academy books that were supposed to be issued to him. Surprise, surprise, the books he received were in horrible condition and contained information that he suspected was false.

As he walked down the street he ignored the glares of the people and said to himself, "Damn, not even 5 minutes this time". Indeed, yesterday night he was able to spend almost an hour hiding deep in the shelves.

Lately, Naruto has been trying to master his first jutsu, the henge. He knew that once he had mastered this jutsu, his stealth incursions into the library would be much more effective, at least on the civilian librarians. He was hoping to get more clarification on how the henge worked other than making the ram handseal, channeling chakra, and imagining what to look like.

"Oh well, just practice, practice, practice, I guess." Naruto said to himself.

-1-

"HENGE," Naruto shouted.

As he looked down into the pond's edge he saw himself staring back. Nothing had happened.

'Dammit, what the heck am I doing wrong,' Naruto thought frustratingly.

For the last few hours Naruto had been practicing in the forest outskirts of Konoha. As evidenced, the training had been less than fruitful, a lot less fruitful. As this was his first jutsu, it was not just a matter of figuring out the eccentricities of this jutsu, it was learning how to do jutsu period. He knew he had the the hand seal down perfectly, as he had badgered the old man Hokage to make sure all of his hand seals were as perfect as could be. He knew he could channel chakra, as evidenced by the blue hue that appeared when he really tried. By process of elimination that must leave the mental aspect.

He sat down on the grass as he pondered the mental side of his first jutsu. He didn't know quite what was supposed to be going on inside of his head. He had tried imagining everything from different hair colors to complete body changes, but none of them had worked.

"Okay, think!" 'It has to be about more than just imagination, there's something I'm missing or just overlooking. Okay, let's think about it like this...' he thought coming up with what he hoped was something new.

"I'm looking for a way to change my appearance... the hand seal and the chakra are the physical requirements and the imagination is the mental requirement... so, maybe I'm looking for a way to connect the physical and mental?' he theorized. "But what the hell could that be?"

"Aghh, I can't give up, I won't give up!" Naruto yelled determined. "Like the old man says, I just need the 'Will of Fire'."

He paused and thought about that for a minute. "Could it be that simple" he said to himself. Was willpower the only thing missing in the equation?

Willpower may be a simple concept, but put into practice it was anything but. At that point Naruto knew what he had to do. He had to decide what he wanted, what he needed. He knew that this was the first true step into the world of ninja. He needed the change, he need to hide himself, he needed to disappear if he had any chance at succeeding in this village.

He imagined his face, his hair, his body, what he had spent every day dreaming of what he could look like. Not hot or cute or even noticeable... no, he needed to be common, plain, forgettable. He needed it more than anything else. He subconsciously felt his hands form into the ram handseal, felt his chakra stir, and said with a calm voice, "Henge." He used the word as a trigger and forced his body to take the form willed it to.

He had no need to look at the water, he knew he had done it.

-1-

Naruto spent the next week refining his first jutsu and began to make a mental list of the things to do with his new found disguise. He knew that this was going to open new doors for him. First of all, he could finally be able to get a library card and check out books, he just had to be careful about only going there when there were civilians manning the desk. He was unsure of the skill level other ninja would have to be in order to detect him. Another thing he was looking forward to was buying any food for their real price. Although Naruto had truly loved ramen to begin with, eating it at every meal simply because it was cheap was getting annoying.

There was also one other item on the list that he was both looking forward to and fearing. Now that he had a way to disguise himself, perhaps he could come up with a way to find out why he was hated. Ever since he had observed other children, he knew that no one else was treated like he was. Every adult he had encountered so far had know the reason and not a single one would tell him. He had begged the Hokage and the Ichirakus over and over to tell him why, but they refused every time.

Naruto already had a rough idea of how to get some answers, find some drunk people, pretend he was a traveler, and buy one of them a drink in order to get some answers. He had encountered drunks from time to time and preferred to avoid them, but the closest that anyone had come to telling him why he was hated was when they were drunk. Unfortunately, they were always silenced either by friends and even once by an ANBU before they could reveal the reason.

Well, that was for later. For now, he decided to do some preparation. After living in Konoha as Uzumaki Naruto, he knew that he wanted life under henge to be as safe as possible. One of the things he had come up for now was to watch other academy students so that he could impersonate them without raising any suspicion. He knew that if word got out that Uzumaki Naruto was wandering around under a henge, things would get much more difficult. In fact, now that he thought about it, he would never let anyone know that he could do the henge, not even his teachers.

-1-

Tonight was the night. Tonight he was going to find out why he was hated. Naruto was very nervous as he ate his late dinner, rice and sauteed vegetables. As a result of free access to most of the library he had been able to research what sorts of food he should be eating for trying to be a ninja. While he knew he needed more protein, even more than that he needed the vitamins and minerals that fruits and vegetables provided. Thanks to the better prices he was able to get some sauces and spices in order to make them taste better, if only slightly. Naruto knew that a lot of kids would love to be in his situation, being able to eat whatever he wanted, but he also knew that he would have to be responsible for making a proper diet for himself.

He cleaned his dishes in the sink and locked up as he left his apartment. He had scouted the bars earlier in the week and had finally decided on a bar to try his plan on. He had decided to go to a more lower end civilian district as to avoid any ninjas that may silence any loose lips and to try and go around midnight, so the drinkers would be drunk enough. He had chosen today because he had observed a caravan of merchants entering the village earlier this morning.

As he neared the bar, he ducked into an alley to apply the henge. He tried to make the clothing as close to a lesser end traveling merchant as possible. After a deep breath, he opened the door of the bar and walked in.

The bar was roughly a third full and the mood seemed to be winding down. Naruto looked around for a man drinking alone, he spotted one sitting at the end of the bar, away from the bartender. He approached the man and sat next to him.

"Man, what a city you got here." Naruto said to the man.

"Huh?" the drunken man replied. "Whadaya mean..."

"This is my first time seeing a ninja village. Usually I just travel to poor little towns who seem scared stiff of bandit attacks. Here, nobody even has the slightest fear" Naruto had tried.

"Oh yeah, bandits piss themselves if they even dream of a ninja" the man said.

"But I'm curious about something. There was some kid being bullied by some adults. I felt so bad for him, but my boss told me not to interfere." Naruto decided to try.

"Huh, we don't hurt kids here. Are you sure it wasn't some ninja instructors training their students? Some of that stuff looks kinda bad sometimes."

"No, it was on the side of the street, although the kid was wearing an ugly orange jump suit and..."

"Ohh, Him... the monster..." the man murmured, "Yeah, ah... don't worry about him."

"Monster? What do you mean?" Naruto probed.

"Don't worry about it, just try to avoid that kid from now on."

"What do you want," a voice interrupted them said.

Naruto looked up and saw the bartender looking at him expecting a drink order.

Naruto quickly remembered where he was and replied "A bottle of Rice Country Sake please."

The bartender walked over a bit and pulled a bottle and a cup from underneath the bar. "250 ryo," he grunted.

Naruto internally winced as he handed over the money. Guess it would be back to instant ramen for a while. Naruto poured himself a drink as the bartender deposited the money. He then looked back at the man and decided to try a subtle bribe. "Care for a sip?"

"Who turns down free booze?" the man stated.

Naruto made sure to fill the mans cup as much as he could before raising his own and saying, "Kampai." The two men drank deeply, or at least one of them did and the other pretended to.

Naruto tried to make small talk for the next half hour, refilling their glasses with his wine every so often. Of course, most of it ended up in the other mans cup. After the man had become considerably more tipsy, Naruto decided to try again. "So by the way, why is that orange dressed kid a monster?"

"Huh, he just is, everybody knows that," he said, his words becoming increasingly slurred.

"Remember, I'm new in town." Naruto said gently. "C'mon, he seems harmless"

"Hah, some people may believe that but most of us know better. The Kyuubi is just faking it. Everyone knows it's just biding its time." The man started to rant, probably not realizing the word that had frozen Naruto suddenly.

The Kyuubi. The nine-tailed beast that had attacked Konoha... on the day of his birth. But how was he the Kyuubi? Naruto tried to get his head back together so he could get some more information, fortunately the small amount of sake in his system was keeping him from truly freaking out yet.

"What are you talking about? That monster was huge, I heard it was bigger than that mountain with the faces on it that I saw. How could that kid be anything related to that thing." Naruto tried.

"The yondaime, our hero sealed it into the kid. The monster then took over the kids body. The stupid sandaime tried to say that the kid is in control, but that's just stupid." the man blurted out.

"Sealed? How does that work?" Naruto managed to say, all the while trying to comprehend what he had just heard.

"I don't know, one of those ninja things." the man droned out.

At this point Naruto was reluctant to hear any more. He quietly excused himself and made for the door. As he walked back to his apartment he thought about his life and how what he heard could be the truth. Before he knew it he had returned to his home and felt clueless as to what to do. He had wanted answers since before he could remember, but he wasn't quite prepared for this.

-1-

Time skip – 1 month later

For the last month, Naruto had been coming to terms with having the Kyuubi sealed within him. He had continued going to the library and training his ninja skills. By now he had learned the kawarimi substitution jutsu and was making progress on the bunshin. He had theorized that since the Kyuubi was sealed within him, that is why he had such abundant chakra, meaning that control would be a life-long problem for him. He had researched chakra control techniques, but they were a problem of their own.

Unfortunately, the control techniques he had access to were for academy level students. Which meant that they were designed for people with both low control and low chakra reserves. For someone like him with obscenely high reserves and an inverse level of control, they would not work. Naruto suspected that it was unlikely that Konoha had any control techniques anywhere for him and that he would be forced to create his own for now. He knew that the purpose of chakra control training was to learn how use specific amounts at a time so that he could gauge how much was needed for later jutsu. Unfortunately, he had yet to find a useful way of getting an initial starting point for his chakra. Right now his chakra had two settings, on and off.

In between his training and studying, he had tried to remain on his best behavior around other people. After giving it some thought, he decided to try and show the people one on one that he was not the Kyuubi. To that end, he had tried a variety of ways to get peoples attention in a positive way. For a while he had tried doing chores for the elderly, but they took to his free labor in a suspicious way. He thought that he had been getting through to one old lady that he was just trying to help, and she seemed to appreciate his work. But after doing yard work for her for three weeks, he asked if he could use her bathroom. The look on her face told him her answer. When he stopped doing free yard work for her, she seemed to spread rumors about him and make it seem like he owed her more work. As if the privilege of working for her was more that the work itself was worth.

He tried helping other kids with their homework as well. Now that he was getting access to helpful information, his true intelligence was winning out. He quickly seemed to rise to the top of the class, or at least he would have if his instructors hadn't failed him for cheating. After all, according to them, it was the only way someone like him could pass. When he tried helping the other kids, they listened to their parent to avoid him and to the instructors that he was a cheat.

In the end, it seemed that there was no generation in Konoha that was willing to give him a fair shake. At this point, Naruto was running out positive energy in which to keep himself going. It was at this point that he decided to pay a visit to the old man, to see what wisdom he could give.

-1-

"Naruto, how are you doing? I hear that your academy studies are suffer even more than normal," the sandaime started.

"Actually, I've been doing better. Probably one of the best in my class. The stupid instructors just say I'm cheating, but can't figure out how." Naruto explained calmly.

"Now Naruto, why would they do that?" the sandaime replied in a placating manner.

"Maybe because they hate the Kyuubi." Naruto said, looking forward to seeing the old mans reaction. He wasn't disappointed.

The sandaime, who had been multitasking between talking to Naruto, doing his endless paperwork, and drinking his tea. At that particular moment, he was doing the latter. The sputtered his tea all over his completed paperwork, ruining the last hours work. The paperwork mattered little at this moment as the sandaime stared at Naruto with a shocked expression. "How... how..." the sandaime started, unable to complete his sentence.

"Did you really expect that an entire village would be able to keep the secret for my entire life?" Naruto said to the sandaime, with an evenness to he voice that even he couldn't believe he was able to produce.

"Naruto..." the sandaime began.

"Tell me the truth of what happened. It's more than likely that the version I know is tainted with hatred and lacking detail." Naruto said with the same even voice.

-1-

The sandaime sat and stared at Naruto. He knew this day would eventually come, but was unprepared for it to happen this soon. He thought of the lies he could tell, any way to make Naruto forget what he had already learned, but knew it was hopeless. Naruto was right. Only the truth could be told now. Anything else would only lead to misery. "Anbu, secure the room."

"The Kyuubi is one of the nine bijuu, the tailed beasts of legend. They are beings composed of youki, demon energy," the sandaime began. "Energy, regardless of the form, cannot be created or destroyed. Due to this, the bijuu are immortal. Anytime throughout history when a bijuu is defeated, they will eventually reform back into their previous forms. The only way to get any reprieve from them is to seal them. Some of the weaker bijuu, meaning the ones with fewer tails, can be sealed into inanimate object for a time, but will eventually escape. The stronger ones, meaning the ones with more tails would escape almost instantly. The only way to seal them for any real time is to seal them in humans," the sandaime said with disdain in his voice.

He kept his eyes on Naruto as he said this, but was only mildly surprised when Naruto neither said nothing nor reacted.

He continued on, "Unfortunately, you can't just place a bijuu in any human, it's youki is too corrosive for just anyone to handle. To handle a bijuu being placed in a human body, the body needs to be young. The child must also have a strong chakra capacity, so that their bodies can adapt to the corrosive nature of the energy. However that fact often creates problems of its own."

"What do you mean, problems?" Naruto finally said.

The sandaime turned his head to a map along the wall and stared. "The youki of the bijuu will always leak out of the seal, mingling with the containers own chakra. This make the container inherently more powerful. More importantly, these beings sometimes are able to find ways to channel the bijuus youki using their own bodies as a focus."

The sandaime looked at Naruto and saw him trying to come to terms with what he was saying. 'Naruto certainly isn't as stupid as the academy claims,' he thought. 'But he's not quite there yet.'

The sandaime decided to just come out and say it. "Other countries have sealed bijuus into children in hopes of creating human weapons to be used in war. These beings are called Jinchuuriki, meaning the power of sacrifice."

Naruto looked stricken as he said this. He looked to be fighting a terrible battle within his own mind as he contemplated what he had just said. "Is that why I was..." Naruto began.

"No!" the sandaime stated decisively. "Konoha is the only village that has not done this and it will remain that way as long as I can help it. The Kyuubi was sealed inside of you because there was no other way to stop it's rampage. If it hadn't been sealed, Konoha would have been completely destroyed." the sandaime continued.

"Then why do the people hate me so much?" Naruto pleaded with him.

"Because they are stupid, ignorant, and naive. They don't know any better. Fuinjutsu is one of the most complicated ninja branches, only the smartest and most advanced ninjas know more that the basics. They don't understand what happened to the Kyuubi other than it is now inside of you. No matter how much I tried to tell them, they couldn't understand. In the end, all I could do was wrap up all knowledge of this matter as an S-class secret. If anyone talks about this matter, they forfeit their lives. On that matter, who told you?" the sandaime asked, looking for an outlet to the emotions he was feeling.

"Some drunk." Naruto replied, "I told him I was new in town, bought him drinks, and kept pestering him about the kid in orange."

The sandaime stared at him as worked out how Naruto had learned the truth. "Wait, does this mean that you drank too?" the sandaime accused him.

"Well it helped numb the truth a bit." Naruto replied with a slight grin. "There's one more thing that I wanted to ask you about while you're in a truth telling mood however." Naruto said, his face once more becoming completely serious. "Who are my parents?"

The sandaime winced as he heard this and said "I told you before, they're dead." He watched as Naruto's face remained the same.

Naruto stilled for a moment before replying, "You know, back when I was living at the orphanage the others had a saying. 'If they tell you your parents are dead and give you their names, it means their dead and you're an orphan. If they tell you your parents are dead and don't give you their names, it means their alive and you're abandoned.'" Naruto said with a sad tone. "Now that I know why I'm hated by the villagers, can you really keep saying that my nameless parents are really dead?"

The sandaime was stricken by this. 'Is this what Naruto has believed ever since finding the truth? Does he believe that his parent's abandoned him the moment the Kyuubi was placed inside of him?' He didn't want to tell Naruto the truth this early, but it was the only way to stop this kind of thinking. 'It's the only way.'

"Your mother's name was Uzumaki Kushina, the previous container of the Kyuubi." the sandaime stated eventually. "When she was pregnant with you, the seal weakened and the Kyuubi escaped, killing her"

"I'm the reason..." Naruto began.

"No! Again, no, Naruto. We were prepared for the seal to be weakened and should have been able to deal with the strain on your mother, but something happened. I don't know all the details, but someone interfered and allowed the Kyuubi to break free. The only man who saw this person was the yondaime Hokage, your father."

"My father, the yondaime?" Naruto, completely shocked at this revelation. "Why would he... I mean if... why?"

Fortunately the sandaime got the gist of what he was saying, "Your father trusted a terrible burden to you. The kyuubi is the strongest bijuu and couldn't be sealed into just anyone. You are at least the third Uzumaki to hold the Kyuubi. Quite frankly, I don't know if many other lines would be strong enough to handle the strain of the strongest bijuu. The one true regret I have is that we couldn't keep the secret of the bijuus placement in you."

"What do you mean, I thought you declared it an S-class secret?" Naruto said confused.

"Your mother and her great aunt both held the Kyuubi since almost the founding of Konoha. When the kyuubi was first captured by the shodaime Hokage, he was able to seal it in secret. When I oversaw the transfer of the Kyuubi to your mother, again we were able to do it in secret. Both of them lived their lives with only a handful of people knowing the truth, and each one of them understood what it truly meant."

"Then why couldn't you keep it a secret for me?" Naruto said despairingly.

"In the aftermath of the Kyuubi's escape and sealing their were too many witnesses. Too many lives had been lost. The truth spread like wildfire and everyone looking for someone to blame for the losses found a target."

"Me." Naruto finally understood.

"Yes."

"But if my father was the Hokage, why would I be living in the orphanage?" Naruto asked. "Surely my parents had at least one friend who could have taken me in? And if I was the Hokage's son, surely that would have kept me from being hated at least a little."

"Your father had many enemies and was greatly feared. He had developed a jutsu that enabled him to wipe out entire armies single-handedly. If Iwa had found out that he had a son, they would have attacked us and as you recall, after the Kyuubi attack we were severely weakened. Even if they hadn't attack in mass, assassins from every country would have gone after you relentlessly."

The sandaime watched as Naruto stared at him, all his questions seemed to be answered.

"I need some time to think about this," he finally said and left.

-1-

"It seems Uzumaki Naruto is destined to be hated by his own people, and Namikaze Naruto is destined to have never existed." Naruto said to himself.

It had been a few weeks since his conversation with the sandaime and Naruto had been going through his life with a strange detachment. He observed the hatred in the eyes of the people as they looked at his true self, as opposed to the way they ignored his alter egos.

A few days ago he had come to the realization that he would likely never be accepted by these people as anything more than a scapegoat. He considered leaving, but knew the world outside probably wouldn't be any better, just more unfamiliar. Konoha, for all it's faults, truly tried to rise above the other villages in terms of morals. However with the time passed since the founding, the people had finally found their missing outlet for all their hatred and cruelty. The other villages had blamed bloodline ninja, different skin colors, even gender, to find reason to exercise their hatred. Konoha had made it almost a hundred years until he came along. Apparently, the temptation to hate was just too irresistible.

That was the problem however. He would always be the object of their hatred. He was now an institution for them. After realizing this about the people, he started to pity them. He knew that he should hate them, but just couldn't bring himself to act just like them. He wanted to change them back, back to the way they once were. Before they infected themselves with this hatred. If he wanted to change that, he needed to do something drastic. He couldn't change who he was inside, but he could change the less important outside.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Naruto thought about his idea for a few more days, but as more time passed, he became more enamored with the idea. Changing his identity and appearance was a simple idea, but required serious actions and follow through. First he would need to come up with a way to change himself so that no one could recognize him, then he would need a new identity and explanation as to where he had come from. Next he would need to live within Konoha as a completely new person without anyone in a village full of the most observant people in the world knowing any better.

Naruto thought about all the people that would miss him, or rather the three people that would probably miss him. The Ichiraku's and the sandaime. The Ichiraku's had given him the only sense of family that he had ever known and had fed him even when he couldn't afford it. Ayame had even been like a big sister to him. He was sad that they would no longer see him for who he was, but he knew that his relationship to them wouldn't be enough to last him the rest of his life.

The sandaime had been his greatest ally. He had given him a home when the orphanage had thrown him out. He gave him a stipend to live on and increased it twice after finding the price of living for a young jinchuuriki. However, now that he knew the truth he had to admit a certain practicality about relying on this particular ally. The sandaime was old, he had retired once already, and that was nearly 10 years ago. He wouldn't be around forever and when, Kami forbid, he died, Naruto had no idea what his yet-to-be-chosen successor would do with him. Plus, as evidenced by his last conversation, there were clear limits to his only ally's power.

Naruto's mind made up, he started to make real plans and researching ways of changing his identity. He learned that a name could be legally changed in one of the eleven major cities in Fire country, including Konoha. Naruto knew that he wanted to do this as subtle as possible to prevent people from finding the truth, but he also considered the possibility that he might one day want to retake the name Naruto after he had won Konoha's respect. So he wanted to do it as legally as possible as well. Obviously, he couldn't change it in Konoha, so he hoped to travel to one of the other cities to find a way to change his name. Then he could reintegrate himself back into Konoha as an orphan looking to become an academy student.

He decided there was no point in delaying and decided to make his goodbyes. He knew the sandaime would be the hardest to convince, and the Ickiraku's would be the most emotional.

-2-

As Naruto walked into the sandaime's office, he was still conflicted as to how much of the plan to tell the old man. He knew he had to tell him he was leaving for a while, but was unsure of whether or not to tell him about his reintegration. He sighed for the umpteenth time as he decided to just play it by ear.

"Hey," Naruto said apprehensively. "Could we talk in private again?"

The sandaime looked at him for a moment and dismissed his anbu guard. "How are you dealing with the aftermath of our latest talk?" the sandaime questioned.

"I must admit I've been thinking deeper than I can ever remember over the last few weeks." Naruto stated after some thought, before continuing. "But, I've come to a few conclusions on where to go from here.

The sandaime nodded and made a motion for him to continue.

"I'm just going to say right now that some of this you're not going to like. But I've thought about this for a while now and this is the path that I want to take." Naruto said with a determined face.

The sandaime frowned and looked at Naruto before again motioning him to continue.

"I've decided to leave Konoha for a while." Naruto came out and said.

As he imagined, the sandaime immediately had something to say about that. "Naruto, Konoha is your home. I know that the villagers are a bit difficult right now, but over time they will learn to respect you."

"No, they won't," Naruto said with a straight face. "One thing that I have observed that you may have missed is that a lot of the villagers like hating me. Hating me makes their lives easier. It helps them to have a scapegoat to blame for all their problems and grief. As long as I'm here, they won't want me to be in any other role. They want me to be the stupid idiot on the outside and the monster on the inside."

The sandaime frowned deeply at that as he tried to come up with a response to it, but Naruto again beat him to the punch.

"I've tried to show them that they're wrong, but I can't change their minds about me. I've gone through a period of hating the villagers back, but in the end I know I'm only poisoning myself with that kind of hate. I've reached the point right now where I pity them for their hatred. This isn't just about me, it's about everyone. Me leaving helps everyone. It lets me be able to grow to my full potential away from their sabotaging hatred and it lets them forget about the everyday reminder of the monster that ruined so many lives."

Seeing the Hokage thinking, Naruto continued, "I won't be gone forever. I'm not planning on joining another ninja village or becoming a common fisherman or something. I just think both the people of Konoha and myself need a little break from each other, for both of our own good."

The sandaime sighed and finally responded, "I can see you put some thought into this, but where would you go? How would you support yourself?"

"I would like an advance on my stipend, maybe enough for a year? As soon as I'm away from Konoha, I imagine things will be generally cheaper, at least as far as I'm concerned." Naruto said, deciding not to tell him about his henge. "After that, I'm sure I can learn to fend for myself in the wild or at least find some part time jobs as I travel."

"It's dangerous out there Naruto." the sandaime intervened. "There are hundreds of bandit groups wandering around Fire country alone."

"I do have some ninja training, obviously not enough to fight an entire group of bandits, but I know enough to be able to get away from them easily enough. Plus I can tell you that I'm not going to go looking for trouble. I'll keep my head down, and if I do leave the country, I will only travel to places without ninja villages. I was thinking maybe hot springs country or tea country."

The sandaime nodded as he knew both of those countries to be bordering Fire country and relatively peaceful. "Alright, I can see you've thought about this and I realize that you may have a point as to how the village has become a bit too use to hating you. Very well, if you promise to return within four years, I will let you leave and give you your advance."

"Thanks, I know that was hard for you to say," Naruto said as he made to leave.

"And Naruto," the Hokage added. Naruto turned and looked at him. "I'm very proud of the way you feel about the village. If the villagers had your maturity about the situation, none of this would be necessary." The Hokage said this as he looked proudly at Naruto.

-2-

The Ichiraku's were easier but much more emotional. They were both sad to see him leave, but upon finding out he knew the reason for his treatment within the village, they understood.

Naruto picked up his money and birth certificate at the end of the week and said his goodbyes to the three people that would miss him as he left Konoha for the first time. Destination number one: Fire Country capital, to change his identity.

-2-

The next day

Naruto decided to take a rather straight road to the Fire country capital, deciding on using one of the main road at an easy pace, relying on being well rested to be able to escape from any dangers along the road. Although, he was already reconsidering this plan, as he had passed many groups of people traveling to and from Konoha, who had expressed interest as to why a child was traveling alone. Naruto had henged for each group after the first group had recognized him. Fortunately that run-in was close enough to Konoha that it wasn't completely unusual to see him there. He knew that he could probably make it to the capital much faster if he tried tree hopping, a popular ninja way of travel. However he was still very inexperienced and knew that if he had a serious accident, he would be completely at the mercy of the wild. So he kept to the main road.

As he traveled, he rethought his plan on how changing his identity would go. He knew that changing your name was a fairly straightforward process, but suspected he would have to cut some corners in doing so. He hoped that he could use the henge to convince the bureaucrats to do a simple change, but suspected he might have to use some of his money for a bribe. He also thought about what name he wanted to be known by for the next decade.

He knew that he couldn't choose a name that was too ostentatious, but he would like to have one that he could be comfortable with. In the end he decided his first name would be Sakumo, after a strong and loyal Konoha ninja. His family name would be Hayashi, just a common name that sounded good with Sakumo.

Sakumo Hayashi.

-2-

After a week of travel, Naruto arrived in the Fire country capital. The first thing he observed, 'this was one huge city.' Indeed, the capital was the biggest city in Fire country. Naruto decided to first find a cheap, but safe place for him to stay for the next few days while he figured out how to change his name.

He scouted the inns and motels before finding the eighth one acceptable. 250 ryo a day for however long he stayed. It was a bit run down, but in a safe neighborhood. He would keep his important items on his person, so really he just needed a safe place to sleep. He found a few cans in the trash and hooked them up to the window and door with a few pieces of string in order to form a crude security alarm to wake him up for trouble.

Satisfied with the work he had done he decided to use the rest of the day to at least find and scout out the government buildings that would be able to provide the services he needed. It took some doing, as the city was completely new to him, but he thought he found the government building where non-criminal legal matters were handled. Being that it was evening by now, he decided to spend the next few hours just wandering around the city and seeing the sights.

-2-

The next morning, Naruto walked into the government building under a henge. He had chosen to look like a ordinary twenty-five year old man. He walked up to the counter and asked the receptionist, "Hello, I'd like to inquire what is involved in legally changing a name?"

The receptionist looked at him with a bored expression and handed him a series of documents from a drawer inside the desk. "Complete forms 21-5.1 through 21-5.3, provide proof of current identity, pay the 800 ryo fee, and wait 5 business days for new identity paperwork." She said with a bored tone.

Naruto looked at her with an expecting look. He had been expecting questions regarding why he wanted to change his name, proof that he wasn't a criminal on the run, or other things like that. He continued, "Is there anything..."

The receptionist looked at him with an annoyed expression and repeated, "complete forms 21-5.1 through 21-5.3, provide proof of current identity, pay the 800 ryo fee, and wait 5 business days for new identity paperwork."

"Ahh, sure, I'll fill these out and get them back to you." Naruto said, taking the paperwork and going over to a chair to fill out the form.

Twenty minutes later he was out the door. 'Well, that was easier than I imagined it would ever be.' he thought. Indeed he had come up with half a dozen plans ranging from convincing her that he was running from an abusive home, to he was a father looking to change his adopted son's name. He wasn't expecting routine bureaucratic paperwork.

-2-

Naruto spent the next week in the travel section of the library looking into different places in Fire country he might consider visiting before returning to Konoha. He saw that most of the places could wait until he was an adult, but one place he did want to try and visit was Fire Temple.

As he left the library to pick up his new identity, he pondered if there would be any of the hidden surprises that he had originally expected. But as he again walked out of the government building, he was gladdened and a bit disappointed to find a reissued birth certificate for Sakumo Hayashi. 'Oh well, next stop, Fire Temple.'

-2-

As he climbed the thousands of steps to get to the top of the mountain, where Fire Temple rested, he considered what he would say when he got there. He knew that the monks that lived here were close to ninjas in the way they trained and would probably not be fooled with a simple henge. He had tentatively decided to go with the truth for the most part, and hope that they could understand his plan.

Naruto finally reached the top and saw the gates guarded by two strong looking monks. As he approached them, the one on the left motioned him to halt and said "Young child, why have you come here?"

Naruto thought things over once more and replied "I'm here to ask the monks for help."

Both the monks looked at him suspiciously and were about to ask for more detail when the gate opened from behind them. An old monk appeared followed by a collection of other monks. The guards immediately bowed and greeted the old man. "Master Mutaito!"

The elder looked at the two guards before looking at Naruto and narrowed his eyes. "I have sensed a great evil approaching, but all I see is a boy. Who are you?"

The guards and the monks behind him readied their weapons as Naruto gulped and responded. "I am Uzumaki Naruto from the village of Konoha and I have come to ask for your help."

"An Uzumaki?" the elder replied. "I doubt this very much. The Uzumaki's were once a great clan known for fuinjutsu, longevity, and most notably, red hair. Who are you really and why do I sense great evil within you?"

The strong monks guarding the gate grew even more agitated at his words.

Naruto panicked a bit as he decided to go with the full truth, hoping the monks would act more like, well... monks. "I'm the kyuubi jinchuuriki. As for being an Uzumaki, well that's what the sandaime calls me anyway."

The elder widened his eyes at the mention of the word jinchuuriki before nodding his head and motion his men to stand down. "Very well, you may enter and state your plea." With this he turned and walked back to the temple within the gates.

Naruto stood shocked for a few moments before taking a deep breath and following. He walked past the still on-guard monks and tried to look more confident than he was. As he followed the elder monk, he observed his surroundings with a bit of awe. He thought internally that if he wasn't so scared, he probably would be even more impressed with the architecture and ambiance. Naruto followed the elder to one of the smaller buildings and was led to a room that looked like a monks version of a lounge. It had pillows to kneel on, with a small table to drink tea off of. The elder motioned him to sit as he took a seat himself. Tea was served by a boy only a few years older than himself.

The elder took a sip of the tea before saying, "I will now hear what you have to request."

Naruto, still rattled by the treatment so far tried to summon his courage to forge ahead. "I would... I mean..."

The monk looked at him before sighing and said more calmly. "Take a moment to collect yourself. Drink your tea."

Naruto, grateful for the slightest bit of compassion, did just that. After a minute of calming down he tried again. "I would like your help to try and change Konoha and my own situation for the better."

With that out of the way Naruto explained further. "As I'm sure your aware, people like me aren't exactly well liked by the common populace. I grew up with a lot of hatred and bias towards me because of the kyuubi. Due to that, the people of Konoha and I are locked in an endless cycle. They hate me, I try to get them to not hate me, they hate me, and so fourth."

The monk nodded before responding. "Well, I can understand now why I felt such evil from you, and while I am sorry for the way you were treated, I don't see what I can do for you."

Naruto smiled before continuing. "I convinced the Hokage to allow me to leave Konoha for a few years to give both the villagers and myself a break from each other. He said that as long as I return before I'm due to become a ninja I can leave Konoha. I however, had the idea to change my identity and appearance and return to Konoha immediately to re-enroll back into the academy. I would work hard, earn their respect, and when I had earned it, reveal myself and rid them of their hatred."

The elder looked at him with a dubious look before responding. "Why not just remain as you are and earn their respect that way?"

"I've already tried that," Naruto commented. "Nobody will even give me a ghost of a chance. The academy instructors hated me so much they were practically teaching me to block punches with my face. How could I earn their respect if they are actively sabotaging me? Everyone thinks I'm a complete idiot because they're the ones grading me and no matter how well I do I keep getting F's."

The monk finally showed some sympathy with the frown on his face. "Again, I don't see how I can help you. This is a training area for monks, not ninja."

"I just wanted to know if there was a way to receive a recommendation from the Fire Temple to enter the academy. I already changed my name in Fire Capital and have new documents. If I had a recommendation from the temple, the academy would be more likely to accept me with little fuss."

The elder monk finally nodded and replied, "I could give you a recommendation, but not for free. You will stay for the next month and train here. Show me your determination, drive, and character, and you will earn a recommendation from the Fire Temple."

Naruto's face went from hopeful to saddened and eventually to determined when he heard what the elder had said. He immediately responded, "Of course, I won't let you down. This is the path I decided and I won't back down until you can see my Will of Fire."

The monk nodded before asking one of his attendants to prepare a bed for Naruto.

-2-

1 week later

Naruto awoke early in the morning. One bad thing about training with these monks is the hours they kept. They awoke before the sun rose and accepted no sleeping in. Naruto yawned before getting dressed and preparing for the day. He knew he had to prove that he was worthy of a recommendation.

Naruto spent the next few hours doing his assigned chores of gathering water from the river down in the valley, carrying it up the stairs with some of the other monks, and cleaning the floor of the dojo. After that, it was time for his chakra control training, one area that he had been failing in rather tragically. As he walked to the instructors chambers, he was stopped by one of the more experience monks, Chiriku. "Naruto, please wait, I know that you are having a bit of difficulty with the chakra control training and was wondering if I might be able to assist."

Naruto looked at him and replied, "Any help you can give would be appreciated, but I think the problem is that I need different exercises to start with and I have no clue as to what they should be."

Chiriku smiled, "I believe I have found one that may suit you. Tell the instructor where you are going and meet me down by the river in clothes you can swim in."

"Thank you Chiriku-sensei, I'll be there in a few minutes." Naruto practically shouted as he ran to tell the instructor where he was going.

-2-

Naruto ran down the steps of the mountain and ran to the river looking for Chiriku. He spotted him a short distance away and ran to him. "I'm here sensei, what do you have in mind?"

Chiriku smiled at him and said, "This is a common skill among ninja that I think you will be able to perform already. It is called, water walking. The ability to walk on the surface of the water by expelling chakra from the bottom of your feet."

'Walking on water! That's possible?' Naruto thought excitedly. "I'm going to learn that!?"

"Yes Naruto, in fact, I believe you will get the skill on the first try. Observe." With that, Chiriku made the ram seal and walked out onto the river.

"Wow," Naruto said.

"Try it Naruto, channel chakra from your feet and walk out here"

Naruto, made the ram seal, concentrated his willpower and produced an impressive amount of visual chakra, focused it on his feet at walked out. To his immense surprise, he stayed on the surface instead of falling in. He had expected that it would take at least a few tries before he got it, like learning the jutsus before.

"Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be." Naruto said excitedly.

Chiriku grinned before continuing, "I'm not surprised actually. The water walking technique only requires enough chakra to stay afloat, but doesn't have an upper limit as to how much you can use. Right now, you are probably using more than five hundred times the amount of chakra required to keep you afloat."

"Okay, well I guess I can see how others might use this to train their chakra, but how is it an exercise for me?" Naruto asked.

"Because we are going to alter the exercise like so." With that said, Chiriku began to sink slowly into the water until his knees were under water. At that moment he slowly began to rise again. "What I'm doing is controlling the amount of chakra I'm releasing to the point where I can barely support myself. I'm allowing myself to sink and rise based on the amount I release. If you can learn to do this exercise, it would be a good first step in learning to use your chakra."

Naruto grinned widely as he tried to do it himself, only to succeed in turning off his chakra completely and dropping in. He released his chakra once more only to shoot out of the water and fly into the air, before dropping back into the river.

"Keep trying Naruto, remember use less chakra, not zero chakra. The eventual point is to be able to do this exercise slowly." Chiriku taught.

"I know, it's just... I've never done anything like this before. But don't worry, I won't give up. I will master this." Naruto responded determined.

"Very good, keep trying. If you need to, you can try to use weights to increase the resistance. That should make it at least a little easier at first." Chiriku said helpfully.

-2-

2 weeks later

Naruto had finally fallen into a routine among the monks. He would awaken and do his chores, then train his chakra down by the river, eat lunch, train in taijutsu with the monks, meditate, eat dinner, talk with the monks, and sleep. Today however there would be a slight deviation. Today he would be speaking with the head monk, Mutaito. As Naruto walked toward his meditation room, he wondered what the elder monk wanted to speak with him about. As far as he knew, he still had another week left of training before the elder made his determination.

Naruto knocked on the door to announce his arrival and enter when he heard the call to come in. He walked into the room and saw the elder peacefully meditating in the center of the room. Naruto walked over him and knelt opposite of the elder. He considered speaking, but decided to just remain silent and wait for the elder to speak.

A few minutes later, Mutaito opened his eyes and spoke. "For nearing one month you have been here, before you leave I would like to hear more of your plan for the future. I would also like to hear what you have thought of the progress you have made in the last three weeks."

"Thank you master. I feel like I have made a lot of progress here in the last few weeks. Two of the skill that I needed the most help with were taijutsu and chakra control. Taijutsu due to the fact that the academy instructor's have never helped me properly in this area. With chakra control I feel like I'm starting to have at least the beginnings of control. Thanks to the exercise Chiriku-sensei came up with, I finally have a way to at least start training. I have to carry almost as much weight as I can carry just to control the amount of chakra enough for me to sink or rise slowly, but it's better than nothing. I always knew that chakra control would something I will be working on my entire life, but at least now I have a starting place." Naruto summarized his training so far.

Master Mutaito nodded as he said, "I am glad that you understand that, and are willing to continue working on your chakra control. I am satisfied that if you keep up this level of training that you will be a fine ninja one day. Now tell me about your future plans for when you return to Konoha."

Naruto nodded before continuing. "Well, assuming you give your recommendation, I plan to reinsert myself into the Konoha academy. I will disguise myself in different clothing, wear a face mask, and dye my hair in order to hide myself. I have already changed my name in Fire capital before coming here, so I already have the documentation. I plan to try and get into the year ahead of where I was, in order to avoid many of the people that may recognize me. Hopefully, the training I received here will be enough to give me a leg up in that area."

Master Mutaito frowned for a moment. "I do not usually endorse deceit, but in your case I can see how it is necessary. What are your plans for when you become a ninja?"

Naruto smirked slightly before responding. "I have given this much thought and as much as I dream of grabbing dangerous and glorious assignments to spread my legend, I understand that everyone must start at the bottom and work their way up. I will research it more, but for now I plan to stay out of the public eye and gather experience and training in a slow and steady manner. I will continue to work hard in training, gain experience from missions, and earn the respect of my comrades."

The elder monk smirked himself before replying, "Sneaky, but so very much like a ninja."

Naruto nodded to this comment. "The only thing that I am conflicted about is the Hokage. I gave him the impression that I would be gone for years before returning, but at this rate I will be back in less than two months. I know that things would be much easier if I told him that I was in Konoha, but I also want to try and do this completely on my own. I know that there will come a day where I can't rely on him and I want to make sure that whatever I achieve in the end is from my hard work, not his political capital. I can tell the sandaime who I am either: when I get to Konoha, when I graduate, when I reach chunin, when I reach jonin, or not at all."

The monk thought about the matter before replying. "What exactly are your motivations for telling him or not telling him? What is it that you hope either of you will do with the information?"

"The most important reason I want to tell him who I am is so he knows that I am safe, so that he doesn't have to worry about me. The world is a dangerous place, I hate the idea of him constantly fearing whether I'm safe or that I need his help." Naruto confessed.

Mutaito smiled before nodding to continue.

"But I feel like I want to do this on my own, my way. If he knew, I feel like he would be watching over me. I feel like he has his own plans for my future that I wouldn't even know about until they were happening. I had to find out about the kyuubi for myself. If I hadn't, I don't know if he would have ever told me." Naruto blurted out at the end.

"It sounds like you care about his man more than any other, but are conflicted due to the position of leadership he finds himself in." Mutaito eventually said.

"Yes, I feel like I have a solid plan, but I don't know how he should fit into it." Naruto confirmed.

"In that case I would advise you to hold off on telling him, at least at first. Write letters to him telling him that you are doing well and continuing your studies. Take things one step at a time. If you feel like you are ready to tell him, do so, and tell him you wish to earn the respect of Konoha your own way." the head monk advised.

Naruto thought for a moment before nodding. "Thank you master, that is what I will do."

"Well, with that, there is only one more thing that I need," the elder monk said.

Naruto looked confused.

"Your new name. I can hardly write a recommendation for Naruto Uzumaki." Mutaito said with a laugh.

Naruto smiled and simply said, "Sakumo Hayashi."

-2-

1 week later

Naruto walked down the steps of the temple for the last time for a while. He intended to come back some day, but for now, he had carried enough water up and down these steps to last the rest of the year. He patted his coat pocket for the third time in the last hour, comforted by the letter of recommendation from Mutaito. With this, he should be able to get into the village and the academy without much fuss.

He only had one more stop to make before returning to Konoha. He would be returning to the capital to buy new clothing and to change his hairstyle and color. After that was done, he would start his new life as Sakumo Hayashi.

-2-

AN1: I think I could use a beta, if anyone is interested PM me. Until then; Soory 4 bad speling and gramar,!.

AN2: Mutaito: pronounced Moo-tie-E-toe, 2 geek points for the first to tell me where I got his name.

AN3: Naruto will be referred to in conversation by Sakumo, in narrative he will still be Naruto.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As Naruto approached the gates of Konoha, he felt a sense of wonder that he had never felt before. Instead of a sense of familiarity, Konoha now presented new opportunities. He walked to the short line of people waited to get into the village and waited for his turn.

Naruto checked himself one last time to make sure everything was in place. His new boots, his green cargo pants, his mesh undershirt, his many pocketed jacket and his new face mask were all in place. His hair had been shaved to only an inch long and was a light brown color. He had a manual shaver in his backpack along with a few containers of hair dye. He was pulled out of his mental inventory by the gate guard who was beckoning him to approach.

The chunin gate guard looked at him with suspicion before asking him, "Name and reason for entering Konoha?"

Naruto replied, "Sakumo Hayashi, I've come to apply to join the ninja academy."

"You want to be a ninja, huh?" the gate guard said. "Do you have any experience?"

"I trained at the Fire Temple for a while, and the head monk wrote me a letter of recommendation." Naruto defended.

"Huh, well that should be enough to at least get you a chance. All right, stand over in that corner for a while. I'll summon a genin to escort you to the administrative building." The chunin pointed to a section of the wall near one of the watchtowers.

Naruto stood patiently in the corner, giving the guard no reason to feel anxious about him. After half an hour a teenage boy arrived to escort him to the administrative building. The teenager grunted for him to follow and remained silent as he led him through the village. After arriving at the administrative building, Naruto went through the security checkpoint after a pair of guards searched his person and belongings. He was then escorted to the third floor where the genin spoke to the paper pusher before leaving.

The bureaucrat looked at Naruto for a moment before pulling out the necessary paperwork to begin the process of accepting a new villager to Konoha. "I'm told that you wanted to join the Konoha ninja academy to become a Konoha ninja. You should know that we receive many people that say they wish training from us and we have a low acceptance rate for non-villagers. Also, you should know that should you succeed in being placed in the academy, you will be automatically entered into a contract upon completion. Before we begin the process, do you have anything add?"

Naruto looked at her before nodding. "I have a letter of recommendation, should I give that to you now?"

She looked at Naruto for a second before replying, "We will deal with that later, but for future reference, who is the recommendation from?"

"Master Mutaito of the Fire Temple." Naruto stated proudly.

She blinked, looking surprised at that remark. "Well, that is impressive. Any way, shall we begin? Name and Age?"

"Sakumo Hayashi. Eight years old." Naruto replied.

"Do you have parental consent to apply for ninja training?"

"I'm an orphan ma'am. Here is my birth certificate." He handed his paperwork over to the woman.

"I see, do you have the means to support yourself while training at the academy? We do not offer stipends to non-Konoha natives." The woman probed.

"I should have enough money if I live frugally. If not, are there any part time jobs available for people of my age?" Naruto asked.

"You would need to take that up with the employers themselves. Very well, please describe your current skill level."

Naruto smiled, thankful to be moving on. "I trained in taijutsu at the Fire Temple, I have studied Konoha history from available texts, and I have researched ninja life from whatever books I have been able to get. I also know the henge and kawarimi jutsus."

The woman's eyes widened at that last remark. "I see, could you please henge into the Hokage then?"

Naruto was about to make the sign when he paused for a minute. Then came to a realization before replying, "I would, but I'm not sure what the Hokage looks like. Could I henge into you instead?"

The woman paused before nodding. "Go, ahead."

Naruto studied the woman before concentrating and muttering "henge." He felt himself change to look like the woman.

The paper pusher nodded before making a note on her paper. "Good, that would actually place you ahead of where your age group is supposed to be. The Konoha academy is a five year program. Children usually begin around age seven or eight and complete around age twelve or thirteen. With your skill level I will recommend putting you in year two. The academy instructors can decide whether to move you up or down based on a closer evaluation of your academic level."

She filled out more of the paperwork before handing him two sets papers. "Here are your temporary citizenship papers and admission paperwork for the academy. Please present yourself to the academy tomorrow morning and they will take you from there. Please carry your temporary citizenship papers everywhere and return here in one month to pick up more permanent papers. I will inform the academy to tell you when they are ready. Do you have any questions?"

Naruto nodded, "Could you direct me to an area where I could rent a low income apartment?"

The woman paused before answering. "How inexpensive are you looking for?"

Naruto who had lived in the cheapest area prior to this, knew exactly where to search anyway, but decided to get directions there anyway to avoid suspicion. "I'll start with the cheapest area, if I need more than that, I'll deal with it later."

The woman nodded before giving him directions to where he had lived ever since leaving the orphanage.

-3-

It was a sunny afternoon by the time Naruto got out of his meeting. As he walked down the street toward his old neighborhood, he stopped by a dango stand to get a few sticks for lunch. He ate as he walked casually down the street thinking, 'stage three complete.' Indeed, he had changed his name, received a recommendation, and now been accepted into Konoha and the academy. Now it was time for the most dangerous step, re-enrolling in the academy. If there was a place that he was likely to be discovered, it was in the place with ninja instructors that could recognize him. He hoped the fact that he had gotten into the year above would help him avoid his previous instructors.

As he entered into his old neighborhood he decided to start looking for an apartment. He knew that his former apartment would probably be the cheapest, if only due to the fact that it had a 'monster' living within. But that was only if the building manager knew that he knew that was the case. Naruto decided to go there first, just to see how much the land lord would try to gouge him. Naruto would then look at a couple other places, hear the rumor of the 'monster' living there, and confront the bastard, if only to make sure he got a fair price on the rent.

As he entered the lobby of the building he saw his land lord, the fat tub of lard, sitting at his desk stuffing his face. Naruto wiped the look of disgust from his face before deciding to get it over with. "Hey, I'm looking for a one bedroom apartment, how much are the ones here?"

The land lord, Fukoshi, stared at him before looking at him with a greedy expression. "We have some of the best one bedrooms available for the low price of 5,000 ryo a month."

Despite the fact that it was a lower price than his old apartment, Naruto knew it was still highway robbery for this part of town. Putting that aside for now, he replied "Can I take a look at one of your apartments?"

Fukoshi, led him to the third floor and showed him the apartment, it was an exact copy of his apartment, except the facets here seemed to have hot water.

"Thanks, I'm going to look at a few others in the area, but I'll return by the end of day if I want the apartment." Naruto concluded.

Fukoshi, frowned heavily before grudgingly accepting.

-3-

Naruto left his old building to look at a few others before returning to confront him. He turned down the street and headed to an apartment building bordering Konoha's small red light district.

As he was about to enter the building he noticed a man fixing one of the ground windows that had recently been broken. Naruto decided to approach him first. "Excuse me? Do you work here?"

The man turned and grunted, "Yeah, what do you want kid. Here to break some more windows?"

Naruto shook his head before replying, "No, I'm actually new in town. Here to try and join the academy. Do you know if the building has any available units and what price they are?"

The man's face appeared suspicious for a moment before shrugging. "Yeah, we got a few, are you looking for one bedroom or two?"

"One is fine, or a studio if you have it."

"One bedrooms around here are 3,800 ryo a month, we have a single studio in the basement for 2,500 ryo a month."

Naruto thought about it. Those prices were a lot better than the prices that the sandaime was paying for his one bedroom apartment. "Could I take a peek at the studio? I'll look around a little more, but I should be able to give you an answer before end of day today or tomorrow."

"Sure, follow me." The man led him down to the basement and showed him the room. It was a single room with a small bathroom, sink, counter, and refrigerator taking up almost half the space. There was only enough room for a small bed and maybe a table.

"Thanks," Naruto said after testing the sink. "Where can I find you I I decide I want it?"

"If I'm not out fixing the window, you can knock on apartment 201 to find me." The man eventually said, as if reluctant to give up his apartment address.

-3-

Naruto looked at a couple others, both of whom had one bedroom apartments for around the same price. He decided to confront his old manager with what he had 'found out' from the other land lords around town. He staked out his old apartment building for a few minutes before he observed Fukoshi taking out the trash from his meals. He timed it so that the manager would see him as he was walking back to the entrance. As he timed, the land lord spotted him and said, "Hey, have you made up your mind yet?"

Naruto put a look of disgust onto his face. "Hah, nice try. Not only are your prices the worst in the area, you neglected to mention the monster living on your top floor. If I wanted to be eaten in the middle of the night, I would have gone and joined Iwa and lived with those savages." Naruto play acted, relying on the well known hatred of both the kyuubi and of the previous war with Iwa.

"What! Who told you?" Fukoshi yelled.

"I told the other land lords where I was looking and every single one of them practically tried to save my life by telling me." Naruto continued on.

"Okay, just keep it down. I'll lower the rent down to 3,000 ryo a month if you live here and I promise it'll never bother you." Fukoshi tried haggling.

One would wonder why Fukoshi would be trying to haggle with a kid, but Naruto knew why. The truth was that due to the combined reputation of Naruto and Fukoshi, his apartment building was hemorrhaging money. The sandaime wouldn't let him tear it down and no one wanted to buy it. Over half of the building was empty, probably more.

Naruto pretended to look thoughtful at his offer but shook his head, he knew he could go lower. "That's better, but another guy offered me a studio for 25 hundred. Not much space, but at least I won't have to worry about waking up the next day."

As Fukoshi sweated, Naruto internally cheered. He loved seeing his fat land lord be put into place.

"Okay, Okay, 2,000 a month."

Naruto considered that offer. It was a good deal and the apartment would be bigger than the studio he had seen. He made a face like he was considering the offer before nodding. "Fine 2,000 ryo a month, but you have to guarantee that price will stay the same for at least three years and that the monster won't attack me."

"Deal!" The fat man said quickly, happy to have at least some more income from his practically empty building.

Naruto grinned as they walked inside to sign the paperwork. It was not only a good deal, but when the 'monster' was discovered missing, he would be locked in at a good price until he had graduated from the academy.

-3-

Naruto walked up the steps of the academy early the next morning. He had spent a rather uncomfortable night sleeping on the floor of his new apartment, as he had yet to get a bed. He took a deep breath before heading into the academy and pretending to look for the head office. He 'spotted' the correct area before going inside the office and pulling out the paperwork he was given the previous day.

He approached the empty desk at the front and took a peek inside of the interior window to see an empty head's office. Naruto took a seat in one of the chairs in the front and decided to just wait patiently for someone to arrive. Less that ten minutes later, the head of the academy walked in with a coffee in hand. He looked around and saw Naruto sitting in the chairs. "A little early to be getting in trouble, isn't it? Who are you and why are you here?"

Naruto stood up quickly before responding, "Sir, I'm here to join the ninja academy. I was told to report here this morning." He handed over his paperwork to the man.

"Hmmm, a little late in the semester to be accepting new students. Let's see. You know two of the academy jutsus already, good... taijutsu training from the fire temple... very promising... even a recommendation from it's head. Well Hayashi-san, it looks like you're off to a fine start already. Why don't you give me a few minutes to fill out some paper work and after that, I'll take you to your classroom."

Naruto smiled, "Thank you, sir."

-3-

Naruto was walking behind the headmaster as he walked to his classroom. Soon they arrived at a classroom filled with students only slightly older than himself. As the instructor noticed the headmaster, he walked over to receive the paperwork for his new student. The headmaster introduced his new instructor as Hiro Kanazawa-sensei, before leaving.

"Very well, I am your teacher, Hiro Kanazawa, you may call be Hiro-sensei." The instructor introduced himself. The instructor then gestured to the front of the classroom and said, "why don't you introduce yourself to the class and tell them a bit about yourself. Class please welcome our new student."

Naruto stepped in front of the class to give his first introduction to his fellow students. "Hello, my name is Sakumo Hayashi. I have transferred here in hopes of becoming a ninja. Before I was in Konoha, I was studying at the Fire Temple. I look forward to working with you." He concluded his introduction with a bow.

"Very good Sakumo-san, please take the empty seat in the second row." Hiro-sensei pointed to an empty spot between what looked like a Hyuuga and a civilian child. Naruto took his seat as the instructor began his history lesson. As expected, a history lesson first thing in the morning quickly put many of the students to sleep.

As the history lesson wound down, they quickly found themselves outdoors for morning workouts. Today their class was doing an obstacle course a short distance from the academy. The obstacle course included bars to jump or climb over, roped areas to crawl under, ropes to climb, and many others. Naruto had enjoyed using this course last year, as it was one of the few training exercises he could do alone, so he knew it would be a piece of cake today. Indeed, when it was his group's turn to go, he quickly finished the course not only before the others in his group, but he managed to finish at the same time as the group that left two minutes before his group left. His action got him high praise from Hiro-sensei and a scowled look from the group that he lapped.

After the lunch break, in which Naruto rested alone under a tree, they returned to the classroom to practice their hand seals. Naruto, confused by this, asked the instructor what jutsus he was expected to know at this point. His response was, "fortunately for you, the academy doesn't start learning actual ninjutsu until the third year. So you have time to catch up to the other students."

Naruto looked quizzically at the teacher before realizing he hadn't see his records yet. Naruto decided to forgo the explanation and just show that he could use some jutsus already. He put his hand together in the ram seal as the Hiro-sensei nodded and said "very good Sakumo-san." Naruto then went the next step further and said "henge" before transforming into a perfect copy of Hiro-sensei.

"Oh, Sakumo-san, I didn't realize that you knew jutsus already, I thought you were concerned about being left behind. Can you do the other two academy jutsus as well?"

Naruto replied, "I can do the kawarimi, but I don't yet have the chakra control to do the bunshin yet."

Hiro-sensei nodded before continuing, "Well, since you know what chakra control is, may I assume you are practicing it on your own?"

"I have a couple exercises that I'm practicing in my spare time. I haven't been working on them since I left the temple because of my move here, but I hope to get back to them soon."

Hiro thought to himself for a moment. If this child had already mastered two of the three academy jutsus and was learning the last, he was already more advanced than the year above. "For now just follow along with the lesson, the end of the year is approaching soon and we can discuss whether this is the correct class for you." Indeed the third year was primarily spent learning the first jutsu, usually henge. He would need to discuss this with the academy head.

-3-

Naruto sat in his new apartment as he made a list of the things he needed to do. The first, was obviously to get some new furnishings for his new apartment. He needed a bed, a chair, and a table. If he could just get those, he would probably be fine for a while. Concerning his schooling, he decided to focus on studying the academy curriculum in the evenings, practice his chakra control in the afternoons after school, and study like crazy for the next couple months until the summer break. Hopefully, if his schoolwork could match his ninjutsu, he would be able to convince the academy instructors to skip the third year.

Naruto planned to get a part time job during the summer, so that he could save as much of his stipend money as he could for later. He was unsure of what he could do or how well it would pay, but just something to do other than training and reading would be nice.

With that he decided to start browsing the second hands stores in the area for furniture.

-3-

1 month later

Naruto was sitting in the head of the academy's office with Hiro-sensei, discussing the possibility of skipping the next year. Naruto and his sensei were for skipping, but the head was not convinced quite yet. His arguments so far had centered around the dislike of sending children out into the world too soon and letting them have a proper childhoods.

Naruto took over for his instructor to argue the pro-point of view. "Headmaster, if you recall, I am an orphan who just moved here, so I don't have any friends or family. Also, while I have enough money to last a few years, the sooner I start working, the better."

The headmaster nodded his head as he considered those points. This was an orphan and he was probably living very cheaply right now. "Very well, I will allow you to enter the fourth year at the beginning of the autumn semester," he finally decided. "Hayashi-san, if I may ask, how do you plan to spend the summer break?"

Naruto considered the headmaster's question before answering truthfully. "I have three goals or aims that I wish to follow. The first is to continue my studies at the library to make sure I'm entering the fourth year with all I need to know. Next I plan to continue working on my chakra control, the monks gave some exercises to work on that I want to try and master. Finally, I want to see if I can find a part time job for the summer. Like I said before, I have enough in reserve to last for a few years if I live frugally, but I know that early genin life won't pay very much either, so I want to keep most of my reserves as long as possible. Speaking of which, do you have any ideas as to where I could look for a part time summer job?"

The two academy employees looked at each other, considering his question. Hiro-sensei eventually came up with an answer. "Actually, now that I think about it, since plant growth is accelerated during the summer, Konoha will often hire extra part time groundskeepers to maintain the training grounds and public areas. I could point you to their office, it's hard work, but it should keep you busy during the summer."

Naruto nodded, it sounded like an acceptable idea. "Thank you sensei, I'd like that."

-3-

3 months later

Naruto had a busy, but useful, summer. Hiro-sensei had indeed come through and hooked him up with a job as a groundskeeper. He spent four hours a day, five days a week, looking after the public areas of Konoha. He would usually mow the grass, pick up sticks or leaves, or fight a new invasive species of plant called buckthorn that was quickly spreading across Fire Country. It was hard work, but it paid pretty well considering his age. He mostly worked alone, each day assigned a section by the permanent staff.

Aside from working, he had also continued the training goals he had for the summer. He had finally begun to make progress on the water sinking exercise. He could now sink and rise through the water without holding onto any weights. It still required constant willpower and control to use only the exact amount necessary, but it was a huge step in the right direction.

Right now he was sitting in what would be his classroom for the next year, surrounded by his classmates, all of whom were at least a year older than him. The children were torn between greeting their friends from after the break and wondering why a younger kid was here. They were interrupted by the instructor for this year, as he greeted his new class.

"Welcome students, I hope you all had a good break. You may call me Kai-sensei. You will be graduating at the end of your next year, so this is the year we will be focusing on learning taijutsu, ninjustsu, and genjutsu. I warn you, this is the year where most of the dropouts occur. We will be moving fast and I expect each one of you to do your best and keep up."

Naruto grinned as he heard this. This is what he expected academy life to be like. He was eager to get started.

Kai-sensei continued, "Last year you focused on accessing your chakra and trying to learn your first jutsu. Some of you succeeded, some of you did not. If you have not made any progress in the henge after the first month, I would advise you to think about civilian school, as ninja life may not be for you. So to begin, let's head outside and run five miles before the temperature picks up."

The rest of the class groaned, but Naruto was just glad it wasn't history.

-3-

As the year continued on, Naruto found that he liked this year more than any other. Every day they would exercise for two hours, attempt ninjutsu for an hour, eat lunch, learn taijutsu and spar for two hours, and study different ninjutsu's and genjutsu's for the last hour. He could tell that this pace was hard on the other students, but he was thriving. He was always an energetic kid, so the exercise was as nice for him as it was horrible for the others, he already had two jutsus down, so he could focus on the bunshin during ninjutsu practice. Kai-sensei was very impressed that he was the only one to be working on that jutsu so far, compared to many of the others, who had still to get the henge.

During taijutsu, he paid close attention to the sensei, and being one of the only ones with any energy left at that point, often sparred with Kai-sensei himself during the demonstrations. Due to this close interaction, he was advancing much quicker in this area than the other students.

At the end of each lesson, Kai-sensei would talk about ninjutsu and genjutsu. He would discuss which element held advantage over the others, when they should be attempted during a fight, and how genjutsu could be used, either subtly or overtly. As the other children were wiped out by the taijutsu at this point, Naruto was usually the only one fully aware at this point. Because of this, Naruto was able convince Kai-sensei to teach him how to disrupt genjutsus by flaring his chakra.

Every day after his lessons, Naruto would go to the river to practice his chakra control. By this point, he had almost gotten to the point where he could do it subconsciously, so he knew he would have to find new ways to train his chakra.

-3-

The next day, Naruto started his newest chakra control training, tree climbing. After asking Kai-sensei for an exercise, he had originally pointed him to the leaf on his forehead exercise, but Naruto had asked for an exercise that used more chakra than that. Kai-sensei, proud of his most hard-working student, was only too happy to give him one.

Tree climbing, he decided, promised to be just as useful in the field as water walking, assuming he could learn it. Water walking needed a constant stream of chakra to exit from the feet. As long as the amount of chakra outputted was enough to support his body weight, it would. Tree climbing on the other hand required an exact amount of chakra focused on the feet, rather than a constant stream, so it would be more difficult for someone like Naruto to learn.

As evidenced by the blast marks on the bark of the tree, he was using too much chakra.

-3-

Naruto sat it a very familiar scene, as his current sensei was arguing once again with the academy head, on the discussion of whether to advance Naruto ahead again. This time, if the headmaster approved, he would be joining the graduating class and would be a genin by the end of the year.

"I must say, when I advanced you before, I thought that would be the end of it. I didn't expect you to try to advance out of the fourth year." The headmaster almost mourned.

Naruto decided to make his feeling about this matter clear to the headmaster. "I must say, I'm also surprised by this. I have really enjoyed this year compared to the last one. I feel like I'm back at the temple, chores in the morning, followed by chakra training, followed by taijutsu, followed by meditation. I'm learning loads about taijutsu and feel like I have a good thing going."

The headmaster looked quizzically at him before turning to Kai-sensei. "Well then, why do you want young Sakumo-san to move up to the graduating class?"

Kai smiled before answering. "While I am very proud of Sakumo-san for his performance in my class, it's beginning to affect the other students more than it should. Sakumo-san is constantly lapping the second best students during runs and performing two or three times the physical exercise. Instead of being a driving force to catch up to, or an inspiration, in other words, it ends up depressing the others. He has mastered all three academy jutsus as well as being able to disrupt c-rank genjutsus. I am the only one who can give him any challenge in a taijutsu fight. If things continue along this trend, I will be forced to ignore his training to catch the others up."

Both Naruto and the headmaster looked a bit stunned by this.

Kai continued on, "At this point Sakumo-san needs to spar with others that can match his taijutsu skill. Right now, the only class that has that skill is the graduating class. Quite frankly, this year is meant to challenge the students by pushing them to the breaking point. The final year is where that slow things down just a bit and make sure they have the skills to succeed. If Sakumo-san is doing this well now, I have no doubts that he would fit in very well with the skill level if he were to be moved."

The headmaster nodded, thinking about the others in Kai's class. If Hayashi-san was taking this much attention away from them, that would need to be fixed or the others would suffer for it. "Well, I must say, I am impressed with your work ethic Sakumo-san. Very well, I will transfer you to the graduating class."

As Naruto heard this, he was quite surprised. Although he knew he would be graduating earlier than expected, he didn't think that he was this advanced yet. He knew he would have to rethink his plans, as they called for him to be a genin at age ten, not nine.

The headmaster decided to add one more thing. "You may not be the only one graduating early as well. Recently Uchiha-sama has been trying to persuade me to allow his son to graduate even earlier. I feel much better about letting you graduate early simply because I know that you have earned it by working hard. I prefer to make these sort of decisions between the academy instructors and myself, rather than having to make a politically pressured decision."

-3-

Graduation Exam Day

Naruto reflected over the last few months as he walked to the academy for his last day. After he had been transferred, the new class had looked at him with a combination of suspicion and envy. While others had been allowed to skip grades before, they had mostly come from major clans. The fact that he, an orphan was allowed to skip made interacting with them a bit of a chore.

He was getting a better challenge in the taijutsu fights now, as the graduating class had older students who were more advanced than the others. He was still among the top five best, but he no longer had overwhelming superiority. Earlier in the year, when he had mastered the tree walking exercise, he was finally able to use a small enough sample of chakra for which he could perform the bunshin.

With his chakra now under at least a reasonable amount of control, he was able to learn and invent other ways to train his chakra. In order to maximize his training before he graduated, Naruto had decided to try to learn ways to always be practicing his chakra control. He would stick different items to his body and try to move them around under his clothing using only his chakra. He would also try to send chakra to only one muscle in order to try and augment the strength of that muscle. In fact, it was this idea that led him to his next endeavor and quite possibly, his greatest idea ever. He wondered it he could used chakra in order to stress a muscle in the same way that exercise would stress it. If he could do this, he could literally train his body without even moving. Of course, that would take much greater chakra control and a better understanding of the human body, but if he could do it, he could quickly become the strongest and fastest man alive.

As the graduating instructor approached his class, Naruto could see he had a strained look on his face. Something was about to happen that his instructor didn't like.

"Class, as you know, today will be the graduating exams. We have worked very hard to get here and I have faith that you will all do very well. Additionally a younger student will be taking the exams as well."

The entire class looked to Naruto, but the instructor shook his head. "No, not Hayashi-san, the heir of the Uchiha clan is being allowed to partake the exams today."

The instructor waved at the door, as a short black haired boy walked in. He was considerably shorter than everyone else and had a blank look on his face. "Due to reasons which I will not go into, Uchiha-san has been allowed to take the graduation test early."

"What?!" a random boy shouted, "we've been busting our humps for five years to become ninja and some kid from a clan gets to skip all that?!"

Quite a few of his classmates agreed with that remark, but the instructor didn't seem to be in the mood to hear it. "Quiet, everyone! Sometimes these things happen. As ninjas, it is your duty to follow the orders you are given. Politics and power often create confusing situations. Let my last act as a teacher to you be to just deal with it!"

The sensei calmed down before instructing Itachi Uchiha to take a seat. "Alright everyone, we will start with the written exam. You will have two hours to complete it, with that said, do your best."

-3-

After the written exam, the entire class headed outside to begin their taijutsu evaluation. Here, Naruto knew they would spar with an academy instructor before sparring with one of the other students. In order to pass, they needed to last against the instructor for one minute. Obviously the instructor would not be fighting with his full abilities or no one would pass. Naruto and the other students began warming up and stretching.

"Alright class, I will call your names in alphabetical order to fight against Hiro-sensei for your test. First up... Tenchi Aburame." the class's regular instructor shouted. A hooded and inconspicuous boy emerged from the crowd and prepared to fight against the academy teacher.

When it was his turn to fight, Naruto stepped in front of his old instructor. Hiro-sensei blinked for a moment before recognizing him. "Sakumo-san, I thought you had been transferred to the fourth year, not fifth year?"

"I was, but halfway through the year they transferred me here." Naruto responded shortly.

Hiro-sensei nodded. "Very well, prepare yourself."

Naruto nodded and the fight began. They both assumed their stances before Hiro decided to start things off with a punch to Naruto's chest. Naruto deflected the fist with his forearm while side stepping away. For the next ten seconds the fight continued like this, sensei attacking and Naruto deflected and side stepping, careful to stay within the confines of the spar.

After the last attack, Naruto put more space between himself and his old sensei. When Hiro-sensei tried to make up for the space difference by lunging forward with more power, Naruto grabbed his wrist and threw his sensei over his head, using his sensei's own power against him. It was a classic akido move that his sensei would have never fallen for if he had been fighting for real, but for a spar like this, it was perfect for demonstrating his prowess.

After the throw, Naruto capitalized by going on the attack, striking at his sensei's knee's and joint's. Hiro-sensei blocked, deflected, and dodged, but didn't attack so that Naruto could show what he could do.

Naruto and Hiro alternated between this kind of fighting for a while before Hiro-sensei decided to try a finisher. He blocked Naruto's most recent strike with a much harder block in order to expose Naruto's back, then grabbed his shoulders to pull Naruto into a knee strike. Instead, Naruto curled up, used Hiro's pull on his shoulders to power him through a backwards somersault, before landing a quick strike on Hiro-sensei's exposed back.

"Time!" his instructor shouted for behind him.

"Pass," Hiro-sensei declared to his instructor. "Good job, Sakumo." His old instructor congratulated.

-3-

Naruto rested a bit during the last half of the fights with the exception of one. He suspected that due the the fact that he and Itachi were the youngest, they would make them fight each other. As expected Itachi was one of the last to go. As Naruto observed him, he could see that Itachi seemed to have a lot of experience fighting against people bigger than him. He used his center of gravity to his advantage and relied on speed and cunning more than strength. As he saw this, Naruto began to plan for his own fight against him.

As expected, when it came time to fight each other, Naruto was paired off with Itachi. For these fights, a win was not expected to pass, but if the child lost, they had to show that their fighting prowess was good enough to succeed in the real world. These fights were observed by both sensei's in order to determine just that.

-3-

As Itachi entered the ring, he observed his opponent. What he saw surprised him a bit. His opponent was a bit taller than him, but clearly closer to his age than to the others. He thought that he was the only one graduating early, but clearly that wasn't the case.

As he readied himself for the fight, he noticed that his opponent was taking a bit more relaxed stance. 'Underestimating me, no doubt.' Itachi thought before preparing to prove him wrong. As soon as the instructor said to begin, Itachi launched himself at the other boy. He stuck to his pattern of using superior speed to overwhelm his opponents defenses at first before countering the blind attacks his opponent would try to change the circumstances. As expected, and like most of his other fights, he fell into a rhythm, soon his opponent would grow tired of only defending and attack with a wild hay-maker. Itachi would then use the power of this move against him with a throw before finishing him off.

He heard his opponent growl and knew the attack would come soon. As expected, seconds later, a wild hay-maker was thrown for which he grabbed onto, adding is own strength and guidance to throw his opponent. That was how it was supposed to go, only, the moment he tried to add his own strength, his opponent has stopped all forward momentum. Instead, Itachi could feel himself be kneed in the side before he was thrown outside the arena.

"Winner, Sakumo Hayashi," he heard the instructor say as he looked confused at the result. Somehow, his opponent had known what he was going to do and led him into it.

-3-

At the end of the day was the ninjutsu portion of the test. The students had to demonstrate each of the three academy jutsus. If they had passed the other tests as well, they received a Konoha imprinted Hitai-ate.

Naruto walked out of the academy with his head held high. His academy days were over and he was officially ready to begin his ninja life.

Or, at least, that is what he had been told. Truthfully, he wasn't so sure. Despite his high placement in the academy rankings, he felt like he wasn't sure if he was ready for ninja life. He had planned to be a little ahead of his classmates, but he didn't expect to be transferred ahead that last time. Due to this, he had decided on a new course of action that would be considered highly unusual.

Normally, new genin were assigned to a three person team and given a jonin sensei. They would traditionally go on D-ranks and train until they were ready for C-ranks. Depending on how long this took, the skills of the team, the patience of the sensei, and many other factors, they would eventually be nominated for the chunin exams.

Instead, Naruto was planning on requesting an immediate transfer into the genin reserve corp. The genin reserve corp was usually a place for injured genin, older genin, or inactive genin. Often times, if a team took the chunin exams and one or two of the members passed while the others didn't, the remainder would be placed into the reserve corp while their fates were being decided. They had no superior officers and were considered the lowest ranked people in the village. They were expected to take the D-rank missions that were left over after the genin teams had taken their pick. If they wanted to go on C-rank missions, they had to be chosen by chunin team leaders who needed extra help for their missions.

To his knowledge, nobody had ever gone straight there from the academy, but it was technically possible. Either way, he hoped to slide in under the radar. In this regard, he hoped that Itachi would help him. He had suspected that graduating from the academy at age nine would attract some unwanted attention from the village, but who is going to pay attention to a nine year old passing the exam when a seven year old is graduating right next to him.

-3-

"You want to what?"

The woman behind the desk couldn't quite believe her ears. As one of the office workers in charge of the genin reserve corp, she spent most of her days talking to genin who wanted out of the corp, not genin wanting in!

"I want to transfer to the genin reserve core. I know that it isn't a traditional path, but I graduated from the academy a lot sooner than I expected. I want more time to train and study before joining a team. I would feel a lot better if I could train on my own and use the genin library to prepare for ninja life. Unlike Uchiha-san, who graduated even younger than me, I don't have a big clan to rely on for training and support. As soon as I get assigned to a team and ordered on a C-rank, my life will be on the line. If I get a jonin who views taking a team of genin as beneath him, my career could end a lot quicker than I want it to."

"So you just want to study and train an extra year before applying for a team?" she asked.

"Exactly, I can take solo D-ranks to prepare, maybe even a low risk C-rank later on. But for now, I just want more time to train. I'm still three years younger than most of the people I graduated with, so I have time."

The woman thought about what he had said. It was true that some jonin senseis didn't want to have genin and tried to rush the genin through the cycle faster than they should. She looked again at the child before her, she was quite surprised that he had graduated as young as he was. "Very well, I will approve your transfer. I expect you to act responsibly and not go on C-ranks until you are sure you are ready."

-3-

AN1: Still looking for a beta. Anyone interested, please PM me.

AN2: I thought I was going to be doing Japanese names for jutsus and locations a lot more, but now that I'm writing this, I think I'm going to stick with english.

Pairing choices that will work with my story:

FemKyuubi

Koyuki Kazahana – not many of these pairings

Hana Inuzuka – underrated pairing that only seems to show up in harems

One thing I am still considering is whether Naruto should tell the sandaime that he has stayed inside the village. I've determined that Naruto would either tell him around the time he's a chunin (sooner than you think) or after he is Hokage. What do you think?


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Naruto walked out of the administration building with his head held high. He knew that this course of action would either make or break him. Most people fought tooth and nail to get out of the genin reserve corp and he expected he would have to do the same when it was time for him to leave.

For now however, his days were his own. There were no academy teachers to force him to study useless things, he would have access to the genin library and training grounds, and he would be able to choose which missions he went on (to an extent).

The first course of action was to make a plan of what he wanted to achieve for his time in the corp. For this, he decided to check out the genin library to see what was available to him for study.

-4-

As Naruto wandered the shelves of the genin library, he was a bit saddened at what he saw. While he knew the chunin library was much more expansive, he still expected the genin library to hold a bit more than this. Indeed, the 'genin' library turned out to be little more than a room with shelves lining the walls.

One area that he had been excited to learn about was fuinjutsu. Ever since head monk Mutaito had identified the Uzumaki's as legendary fuinjutsu masters, Naruto had been hoping to learn the subject. Unfortunately, it seems that there is a grand total of one book about fuinjutsu in the genin library. He examined the thin book and found that it was little more than a how-to book on creating and using storage seals and explosive seals. Naruto thought to himself 'I guess those are the only things most people do with fuinjutsu.' Regardless, he added it to his ever growing list of things to do.

Naruto continued to look through the shelves, adding to his list of topic he wanted to study. Among his list so far were greater chakra control, trap making, field tactics, strategy, weapons study, tracking, field medicine, and etiquette. He debated whether to include etiquette on his list, but knew that usually it was the wealthy who hired ninja and expected them to behave themselves in civilized society, so it went on the list.

For now though, Naruto paged through the chakra control books, looking for new exercises that he could perform both actively and passively. He was far more interested in the passive chakra control exercises, as those he could do while studying here in the library. Multi-tasking was a key trait that he was looking forward to achieving and if it helped him save some time, he was all for it.

-4-

Naruto was checking out the D-rank mission office for the first time. He had mentally prepared himself to drastically lower any expectations on what sort of missions he would get. Naruto knew that most of the D-ranks were little more than chores. Some jonin liked to take some of the D-ranks and turn them into mini-missions and encourage teamwork, but at the end of the day, they were chores designed to give the genin extra money while they focused on training.

Naruto looked through the available assignments that were left over from the teams. He was looking for a solo mission that wouldn't take long. Eventually he found one of picking up trash down by a river. He figured that wouldn't be too different from his landscaping job that he had taken during the summer. He walked over to the teenager sitting behind the counter to check out the D-rank for himself. The teenager looked suspiciously at him before asking to see his credentials. Naruto handed them over silently and waited for the office worker to be done with his suspicions. He eventually received both of them back before he headed out to perform his first D-rank.

The D-rank was a simple one, he was confused at first as to where to get garbage bags and where to take the trash when they were full, but a quick stop back at the mission office resolved his questions. He spent a few hours quietly picking up trash alongside the river. There wasn't too much as he suspected this mission repeated itself fairly often, but after a couple of hours he was done. Naruto returned to the mission office to report his success and collect his pay, meager as it was. Regardless, he now had a successful D-rank on his official record.

-4-

His days continued on like this for three months. Each weekday, he would collect and do a D-rank mission for a few hours. Naruto mostly liked the short D-ranks he could do by himself, but occasionally he was assigned to work with a few others. If he did work with others, he noted that most of them were short-tempered teenagers who were disgusted with the fact that they were still doing D-ranks at their age and not something better. Naruto resolved himself not to end up like them and to make sure that when it was time to start taking C-ranks, he would show the chunin leaders that he would be hard working and pleasant to work with.

Naruto made a habit of going to the office at different time and poking his head into the C-rank office to see how busy they were at times. As he expected, during the late morning and early afternoon, the office was flooded with genin like himself trying to get onto a C-rank mission. On the other hand, in the early morning when the office first opened, he noticed that there were chunin actively looking for genin to accompany them on missions. He resolved himself to start altering his schedule now so that he would be wide awake early in the morning and able to get C-ranks when it was time.

Aside from the missions, he spent most of his days training. Each night he would read the books he had flagged from his first time in the library and make a plan for the following day. Each day would usually start out with the same sort of exercises he did back in the academy, except he pushed himself harder each time. He would then usually scour the training grounds looking for discarded weapons and equipment that he could use for himself. Most of what he found were broken or worn pieces that were probably right to be discarded, but Naruto took them anyway. He learned how to fix most of them himself and use them for his trap making practice.

When Naruto had added trap making to his list, he had forgotten one thing. Trap making was an extensive field with numerous types and ways to be done. The central fact was that they all needed equipment to perform. Equipment he didn't have and equipment he didn't want to spend all his money buying. Some of the cruder traps could be done with what was found in nature, but those probably wouldn't fool even a lesser ninja. Instead, he collected the scraps leftover from the higher ranking ninja, repaired them the best he could, and used them for practice. He didn't get to produce all the traps from the book, but over time, he got a much better understanding of how traps worked overall.

When he began learning about field medicine he discovered that the ninja hospital offered a week long class to introduce genin to basic field medicine. Naruto immediately signed up for the next available course. Over the week, he had received an extensive review of what he had learned in the academy (and what he had missed from skipping so much of the academy). They showed the students what to do in emergency situations and how to perform crude surgery if nothing else was available. None of the students were particularly eager to perform a real life cauterization in the field, especially on themselves. At the end they were all give a small booklet of the best plants typically found in Fire country and how they could be used to make healing salves and medicines. After this week Naruto found field medicine to be a very crude field, but in a real life situation, he supposed it was better than nothing.

At night, he studied strategy, tactics, weapons, and etiquette. He knew he was approaching the point where what he needed now was experience. After a few C-ranks, he could re-design his training schedule and adjust what he needed to learn. So, after three months of training and D-ranks, he resolved to take his first C-rank tomorrow.

-4-

Naruto showed up bright and early, right as the mission office was opening, so that he could receive his first C-rank mission. He knew that he would have to be selective, so as not to take anything he couldn't handle, but at the same time, knew he couldn't be too picky.

After waiting for a few minutes, an older chunin poked his head in through the door to see if anyone was in the room. Surprised to see a child there, he walked in and said, "Hey, are you a ninja?"

Naruto replied, "Yes, I graduated a few months ago and am looking for a low risk C-rank to get started with."

The chunin nodded and thought to himself before continuing. "Well, I have a C-rank and could use an extra hand. It's probably just going to be a lot of running around without much danger, I suppose you could come along."

"What would we be doing, if you don't mind me asking?" Naruto questioned politely.

"Delivering payment to a series of mines. We collect the money from the head office in the capital, then go to the mines spread across Fire country and deliver the monthly pay. There may be a risk of bandits trying to get the money for themselves, but they usually don't bother when it's ninja doing the delivery."

"That sounds fine, if you're willing to have me, I'd love to go." Naruto replied.

The chunin chuckled and said, "This has to be one of your first missions kid, I haven't seen anyone this excited for a mission like this for a while. Alright, go pack for a two week mission kid, there will be a lot of running around and we can probably hunt for most of our food, so pack light and meet me at the main gate in an hour. By the way, the name is Bekko."

"Sakumo Hayashi," Naruto introduced before heading home to pack.

-4-

Naruto rushed home to pack for his first mission. It sounded like it would mostly be a lot of running around without much danger, so it was exactly the sort of low risk C-rank he had been hoping for.

As he arrived home, he made a mental checklist of the things that he would need. He had prepared for situations like this by learning how to make a basic storage seal and packing his optional or heavy items in a seal while keeping the items he absolutely needed on his person. In the seal was a sleeping bag, rain-proof tent, spare clothing, extra kunai, rations, and water. On his person would be kunai, a compass, a map, a few ration bars, a water bottle, his sealing scroll, and an empty sealing scroll.

He decided that this should be sufficient for a mission like this. Perhaps he could ask Bekko for some advice in packing for future missions, he seemed like an easy going bloke.

-4-

As he approached the main gate, he saw that Bekko had not arrived yet. He checked around the gate to make sure before plopping himself down on the ground where he could see everyone coming. Ten minutes later, Bekko approached the gate himself. He looked a little surprised seeing Naruto there already, but remembered it was his first mission with a smirk. "Alright, let's check out with the guards and get moving."

They approached one of the gate guards to register that they were departing on a mission. Since it was still early, their weren't many people trying to enter or exit Konoha yet. The guard took down their names, ninja id numbers, and mission id number before wishing them luck.

"Alright kid, have you ever been to the capital before?" Bekko asked.

Naruto replied, "Once, about a year ago. Just take that road straight north for about a week at walking distance." Naruto pointed to one of the roads leading away from Konoha.

"Well, we're going to go faster than walking, but yeah. Why don't you set a pace that you are comfortable with. We will travel parallel to the road about a hundred feet away."

Naruto nodded, understanding that Bekko was unfamiliar with how fast or well he could travel. He set off, tree walking up the nearest sturdy tree in the forest surrounding the road to demonstrate that he knew that skill before tree hopping at a pace roughly equal to what he practiced with.

Bekko trailed behind him for a while before coming to his side. "Not bad, kid. How long can you keep up at this pace?"

Naruto thought before answering, "Well, I try to practice tree hopping around this pace, so I can go like this for a couple hours before taking a break."

Bekko's eyes widened at hearing that. This kid was moving at a high genin speed of travel, which was the speed most chunin and jonin traveled at. Fast enough to make good time, but cautious enough to be wary of any dangers. He doubted that he was paying attention to his surroundings the way that an experienced ninja would, but then the was still pretty green. If this kid was capable of moving this fast despite his age, it was no wonder he was a genin already.

"If you can go this speed for that long, it's no wonder how you graduated early." he eventually said.

Naruto nodded almost mournfully. "Yeah, at first when the instructor wanted to move me ahead, I was excited, but after a while I started to miss it. I knew I would be a little younger than the others when I graduated, but I didn't expect to graduate this early. Apparently instead of inspiring the others to work harder to catch up to me, I was depressing them into thinking they would never catch up with me, so he endorsed me to graduate early."

Bekko nodded. "Don't get too down, I fought in the last war and had to fight with a lot of kids that were graduated early, but still not ready for a war-zone. Then again, I don't think anyone is really ever ready for a war-zone. Still it's been a while since anyone has graduated early, probably not since just after the kyuubi attack."

Naruto grinned. "Actually, I'm not even the youngest to graduate this year. There was another kid graduating at age seven as well."

"Seven!" Bekko said surprised. "That's not the youngest I've ever heard of, but it's close. Why would anyone let a kid that young graduate during peacetime?"

"I think he was the clan heir of the Uchiha clan..." Naruto started.

"Ohh, the Uchiha. That explains it." Bekko suddenly said understandingly. "They're some of the biggest headed people around. I have no doubt they graduated their heir as early as possible just to try and rub it in everyone's faces how great they are."

"Anyway," Naruto said breaking the current conversation. "What is this mission going to be like in more detail?"

"The mission is going to be pretty simple. At this rate, we will have to camp out about a few hours away from the capital. Tomorrow, we will pick up the money from the head office along with a map of where to deliver it and instructions on which mine gets how much money. Since this is your first time, we will go to the first mine together to show you how it works. After that, we will probably split apart and each deliver to one or two mines before meeting up again and repeating. The whole process should take a couple of weeks, maybe a bit shorter seeing your traveling speed."

"Why don't they just deliver the money themselves?" Naruto asked.

"A combination or reasons. First, handing a substantial amount of money is a risk because the employees might decide to take it and run. Next, there is the threat of bandits, so they would need a larger force of security to protect it, which costs more. Third, ninjas can travel much quicker than most others, so there is the speed factor. Lastly, there are multiple ninja villages that they could hypothetically hire, if Konoha doesn't do a good job at a reasonable rate, they could hire another village to do it. In the end, it's just cheaper and more secure to do it this way."

-4-

They reached the capital late the next morning. Bekko expertly led them to the home office of the 'Mighty Mountain Mining' company. They navigated the building to the payroll department and announced themselves as the ninja hired for the job. The people at the payroll department, who had gone through this many times, gave them the map of the distribution, paperwork for the mines, and the money for each mine.

Bekko expertly sealed the money away into a scroll that he carried on his person. They then headed out to deliver the money to the first mine.

-4-

The two headed to the first mine, located to the east near a group of mountains that had a good supply of silver being removed. The single eastern mine was only a half days travel away from the capital, but was included in their mission delivery, so it was a bit of a detour away from the other mines.

Once they were away from the capital, Bekko showed Naruto how he was going to separate the money into separate piles for each mine. He explained that he did this here, out in the middle of nowhere, so that none of the employees could see how the money was divided up and would know in what order they were delivering the money. If any of them were being bribed or blackmailed for the schedule, they wouldn't be able to give accurate information. Bekko explained to Naruto that after he showed him how to make a delivery, they would travel west together before splitting up to distribute the rest of the money faster.

As they approached what could only be a mining effort, Bekko quickly showed him where to find the people in charge. Typically, the people in charge found themselves living in the nicer areas and supervising the lesser supervisors in operating the mine. In this case, it was an older man sitting behind a desk in a house near the mine. He looked like he had never mined a day in his life, but that was probably true considering the fairness of the world. They unsealed the money intended for this mine, distributed the paperwork, and received a signature confirming the payment.

The entire process took only a few minutes and they were soon out the door, headed back west, to where the primary ore extracted was iron, on it's way to be turned into steel.

-4-

Naruto and Bekko separated a day later, each going to hit two mines before meeting at another mine the next day. Naruto had been given a slightly shorter route than Bekko. In this region, there were a lot of mines, due to the heavy concentration of iron ore just beneath the surface. Naruto was a bit scared to be on his own, but knew he should be fine, it was after all, a low risk mission.

Naruto traveled for two hours before hitting the first mine. Probably the most trouble he had was finding the proper authority at the mine, but in the end he resorted to his old standby of using the henge to appear older. Once he had located the man in charge, he changed back to his original self, not knowing whether or not he should try to approach him as anyone other than himself. The man was highly dubious about a kid delivering the payroll money, but in the end Naruto just asked him if "he wanted the money or not". In the end, he had received his signature, and they had gotten their money.

The next mine was about four hours away and Naruto took a slight detour to have lunch near a river. He was able to catch a couple fish with a net Bekko had lent him. Something that he resolved to include on his next mission. Naruto roasted the fish while taking a break before continuing on to the next mine. As he arrived, the exchange happened almost exactly the same as the previous one.

Naruto continued on to the last mine where he would meet Bekko that night. A few hours later, as evening was approaching, he arrived at the mine and looked for his commander. He spotted Bekko lounging on a tree branch overlooking the mining camp and headed over. Bekko spotted him as he approached, "Any problems?"

"Only in trying to convince the guys in charge that I really was delivering their money." Naruto responded.

Bekko chuckled before leading Naruto over to a camp ground he had already scouted.

-4-

Naruto and Bekko walked slowly to the gates of Konoha. They had completed the mission in just over twelve days, which was pretty good according to Bekko. They were walking the last distance so that Naruto could ask Bekko any other questions he had about C-rank missions or anything else. Bekko, having accepted his rank and place in Konoha, answered his questions in a helpful manner.

They had talked about what sort of missions Naruto should be taking now, what else to bring on missions, when he should try to join a permanent team, and what sort of lifestyle most ninjas ended up leading. Bekko, for instance was a civilian ninja who had worked hard to achieve his rank. He had neither the chakra reserves nor the intellect to go for the jonin rank, but he was satisfied with chunin. He explained that most civilian ninja had great difficulty going beyond being a career genin and many ended up taking administrative roles rather than ninja roles.

They checked back into Konoha with the gate guard before walking back to the mission office. They continued their conversation all the way to the mission office where they reported a successful mission. Naruto thanked Bekko for allowing him to accompany him and for teaching him so much on his first mission. Bekko just laughed and told the kid to "take it easy" before departing home for some rest.

-4-

From that point on Naruto went on a few more C-rank missions with some time in between for training. He always showed up early for missions and was usually offered spots on mission teams if he wanted them. This allowed him to be a bit more selective about missions and to avoid situations he knew he wasn't ready for. He had already gone on a protection mission, another delivery mission, and most recently, a bandit mission.

Naruto had been cautious about whether or not to take missions that might involve killing. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he would have to take his first human life, but wasn't sure if he could. When a chunin had come looking for genin to help him with a small group of bandits that had raped the granddaughter of an important port city's mayor, Naruto decided to try and get it over with. He had turned down other bandit eradication missions previously, but he decided to accept this one due to a number of factors. One, the group was small, so if he froze before or after his first kill, his team would not be affected. Two, the mission involved some tracking, which he was trying to learn. Finally, the chunin in charge would be Bekko, who understood that it would be his first time killing, so Naruto felt more comfortable taking a mission that involved killing with him than he likely would anyone else.

The mission had been relatively simple. They had gone to the port city, seen what the bandits had done to the poor, barely teenage girl. They spoke with some of the people who had interacted with the bandits to learn the general direction of where they were headed. Naruto and his team caught up with them a day later when the bandits had set up camp for the night.

The bandits were circled around a fire enjoying a deer that they were roasting. The bandits were only five in number, so it was a very small group, but if they hadn't raped such an important person, a group that small would have likely avoided the attention of ninja. Bekko made the simple plan of simply killing them with shuriken and kunai from afar. Bekko and an older genin would take out two of them each, having already marked which ones, after Naruto had taken out his first. All Naruto had to do was aim true and the other two would finish their marks off.

Naruto had taken some time, but eventually just threw a kunai at his target. His aim was true and hit the bandit just below the neck, hitting him in his spinal cord. The other two had immediately dispatched their targets, while Naruto had thrown up whatever was in his stomach.

Bekko took photo's of the targets to confirm death while the other genin looked through their belongings for anything of value. Apparently, that was one of the extra perks of bandit eradication, anything not claimed in the mission information was fair game for the ninja. Naruto received his share of the loot while Bekko tried his best to council him on the way home.

-4-

AN: I'm revising chapter 5 right now and I'm pretty proud, so expect it within the next week. I'm writing chapter 6 and not real happy, but it is going to be mostly a filler chapter anyway, so don't get your hopes up.

It will probably end up being NarutoxHana at the way I'm going and I am still undecided on whether or when he should tell the hokage who he is.

Thanks for the reviews on who I should pick.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Naruto was sitting in the C-rank mission office, waiting early in the morning for a C-rank mission. It had been two weeks since his first kill and he wasn't looking forward to a mission which would require his second. He had been here for only a few minutes and he had rejected two offers to join missions already. One was for a larger bandit eradication and the other was for civilian protection detail. He was in no mood to kill again and wasn't in the mood to guard some whiny civilian either.

"Hey, are you looking for a mission?" A girl asked, interrupting his somewhat depressing thoughts.

Naruto looked her over, face markings and dogs trailing her, an Inuzuka. "Yes, but I guess I'm being a little picky at the moment. What is your mission?"

"Search and Rescue," she replied immediately. "It's the only kind of missions I take these days."

Naruto considered for a minute. That sounded promising, no killing, less contact with whiny civilians, and using skills he wanted to learn more about. "Sure, that sounds good. I'll go pick up my pack from home, anything special I'll need for this mission outside of the standard supplies?" Naruto asked.

"We'll probably be traveling alongside roads and tracking a group of travelers, outside that, I don't know how long it will take, so just plan accordingly. I'm going to hang out here and wait to see if I can grab a couple more genin, so meet me at the main gate in an hour."

-5-

Naruto stood at the main gate a while later, waiting for his new team. Exactly one hour after he had left the mission office, the Inuzuka showed up with a surly looking genin behind her.

"Alright, a group of travelers has gone missing between Kozaki, a port city to the east, and Hirogawa, a port city to the south. These travelers were on their way to establish a sea trading agreement between their two ports. For some reason, they decided to travel there on land, but they are already five days overdue and none of the travelers along the same road have reported seeing them. We are going to rush to their origin point of Kozaki and follow their trails as best we can. We will likely be moving fast, so try to keep up."

Naruto nodded at the Inuzuka's briefing and hoped he would be at least better at running than the other genin.

-5-

After two hours of running it was obviously apparent that the other genin was in fact a terrible traveler. Their small group had already had to stop for a break twice now just to give the other genin a chance to rest. During their breaks Naruto had introduced himself (as Sakumo of course) and learned the name of his other teammates. The Inuzuka was named Hana and was the 'Chunin on-call for low rank search and rescue missions' and the genin was a civilian born teenage boy named Ko.

Hana had explained that she had been the chunin on-call for the last two years and had been almost exclusively on search and rescue missions. "When a request comes in for a search and rescue mission, they find me wherever I am and I have to head out, usually within an hour or two. Sometimes I have time to recruit a few genin to help with the search, other times they wake me in the middle of the night and send me on my way." Hana commiserated to Naruto.

"Why did you agree to become the 'chunin on-call' then? Naruto asked.

"Well, it did get me promoted to chunin, and one of my cousins had the job before me. When I'm done with these missions, I can move on to any field I want." Hana explained.

"What do you want to do?" Naruto asked, curious about the girl who was a lot closer to his age than his other chunin commanders.

"At this point, I want to try out the medical field. Either becoming a medic-nin or a veterinarian." Hana said with passion. "But I can't do that until I find a replacement. Anyway, breaks over! Let's get moving." Hana shouted, mostly in the direction of Ko, who had caught his breath again.

-5-

Eventually, they managed to make their way to the origin city of Kozaki. Hana immediately went to the authorities to find information on the people they were suppose to be looking for. They met with the deputy mayor to discover that the group had in fact left on time. A police officer was summoned who escorted them to the peoples houses so that Hana and her triplet dogs, the Haimaru brothers, could get scents from the leaders of the group.

With that, to the grief of Ko, they were once again on their way along the trail, this time headed toward Hirogawa. Hana had left Ko at a cafe near the entrance of the town to get some rest, but their time in the city was too short for his liking. Fortunately it had not rained so far this week and the dogs were able to pick up a weak scent from the group they were pursuing. Hana had said that they should be able to find the group eventually, since they had a scent to start off with, and their traveling speed would only make the scent grow stronger.

As they were traveling Naruto struck up another conversation with Hana. "Hana-san, what do you think happened to the group we're looking for?"

Hana looked at him and replied, "More likely than not, bandits or wild animals. It could be that they were just lost, but that usually happens in much worst weather. And the name is Hana not Hana-san."

"Dang, I was hoping to avoid bandits on this mission." Naruto said.

Hana looked curious at that statement. "Why's that?"

"I killed my first bandit on my last mission, I guess I'm still dealing with it." Naruto muttered the last part of the sentence.

Hana's superior hearing still picked it up however. "I see, that can be difficult, especially for non-clan ninja. What happened to your genin team?"

Naruto smirked and said, "I didn't have one. You can probably tell that I graduated a bit younger than others, even younger than I originally planned to. I decided that I wanted some extra time to train and study what I might have missing in the academy. That, and I wanted to decide what missions I wanted to take instead of letting some random jonin, who might not even want to be a sensei, decide for me."

Hana considered what he had said. "Well, just based on your physical endurance level, I'd say you're more than ready. Most genin I bring along are more like Ko." Hana gestured behind her, where Ko was panting heavily trying to keep up. "Are you going to apply for a team soon?"

"I was thinking of just keeping up the way I'm doing and then try to join a team with some of my old classmates. Like I said, I'll still be younger than them even when it's time for them to graduate." Naruto said.

-5-

The next day, the Haimaru bothers found a patch of blood that they identified as one of the groups. Hana stopped to investigate the scene. She and the others had noted that the scent trails divided here into separate groups and divided her team to match it. Naruto got one of the Haimaru brothers and they were instructed to follow the trail leading north into the dense forest. If they found anything, they were to send up a flare that Hana had given them and make their way back to the road if they hadn't found anything in four hours.

Naruto followed his assigned dog as he led him through the deepening forest. After half an hour of following the scent trails, Hana's dog eventually barked at a cave that they had stumbled upon. Trying to read the dogs mood on whether their were victims in the cave or bad guys failed, seeing how this was the first time he really interacted with a dog. He decided to just take it cautious and slowly enter the cave. He thought briefly of sending up a flare, but decided to at least scout it out a little first.

Naruto entered the cave as silently as he could, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He followed the cave in deeper and was eventually drawn to a distant light at the end of the cavern. He peeked behind a rock and saw them, bandits, again. It looked like a group of about a dozen, and Naruto had found their hideout.

Naruto stayed quiet as he observed them from the entrance of the big cavern room. They looked like they had been here for a while, as most of the bandits appeared to be either sleeping or passed out in what looked like straw beds. He looked beyond them and saw what he had come searching for, along the outer wall were two women, their hands bound and their faces beaten. It looked like they were being held by the bandits for 'entertainment.'

Naruto controlled himself as he had seen enough. He quietly exited the cave and took out the flare Hana had given him. He climbed to the top of a nearby tree, being careful to look around for any bandits guarding the cave that may see the flare. He was about to set off his flare, when he spotted one in the distance to the south, Hana's position.

Naruto looked to the dog, who had followed him quietly throughout and asked "Can you find this place again?"

The dog gave what looked like a clear nod.

'Okay, good enough for me,' Naruto thought, before saying, "Lead me to Hana."

-5-

When they found Hana, Naruto was able to detect a scent all by himself. When he caught a glimpse of why she had used her flare, he immediately felt the bile coming up from his stomach. It seemed that Hana had found out what happened to the men from the group, and Naruto could smell it from fifty feet away. Their bodies were in a pile which had been both rotting and being picked apart by various scavengers.

"Sakumo, as you can see, I found the bodies of the missing travelers. It was almost definitely bandits who robbed and killed them. Looking through the bodies, I can see that there are at least three missing." Hana explained.

Naruto let his stomach settle before replying. "I think I found the bandits camp. I was just about to send up a flare when I saw yours. There is a cave to the north of the road with about a dozen bandits inside. I scouted it out a little and saw they were holding two women hostage."

Hana looked torn between congratulating him for his find and scolding him for his recklessness. Eventually she settled to just ask if he had seen Ko.

Naruto shook his head before saying, "What now?"

"I think you know what now. We kill the bandits, save the women, and return them home. For now let's return to the road and wait for Ko, he probably didn't see the flare." Hana said.

Naruto nodded. 'Damn, I wanted a mission with no killing, and now I'm about to do the same thing again.'

-5-

Ko eventually turned up later with a survivor. The survivor, a young man named Daiki, had fled as soon as he had seen the bandits. He then spent the next few days lost in the forest until Ko had found him. He confirmed that there were about a dozen bandits, but couldn't say anything more.

Naruto had sketched out on some dirt the layout of the cave so they could plan out their strike. Hana looked at Naruto and wondered whether or not he would be able to complete this mission, due to the fact that he had only killed once before this. In the end she decided to speak with Naruto alone. "Sakumo, can you take a walk with me?"

"Sure," Naruto said as he followed her.

They walked for a bit before Hana brought up her line of thinking. "Do you think you are up to the task of killing more bandits?"

Naruto hesitated before answering, "I'm not sure. I know it's my duty and it probably won't be the last time I have to do something like this, but..." Naruto tried to finish his sentence, but just couldn't come up with the right words.

"I know," Hana replied. "In some ways the second kill is a lot harder than the first kill. The first kill is usually an automatic response or such a new experience that you don't think about it too much at the time. The second time, you are usually well aware of what is about to happen."

Naruto nodded as he heard this.

"And you're right, killing is unavoidable in the ninja profession. Those who can't kill usually get reassigned to administrative duties and during peacetime, that's completely understandable. Anyway, dealing with this specific situation, I want you to wait outside the cave with Daiki." Hana brought the conversation back to the mission.

"But..." Naruto tried to interrupt.

"You are still a young genin, and you still have time to think about how you want your life to go. You can make this decision later and I can't rely on anyone going into that cave that hasn't completely decided whether or not they can kill again. Ko and I will deal with the bandits, you will wait outside and protect Daiki."

"Okay," Naruto said weakly, embarrassed of his weakness.

"Alright, let's get back to the others we'll plan our attack." Hana said, turning to return to the others.

Hana chose to attack in the evening. She made a rough plan of waiting for one of them to come out of the cave, either to relieve themselves or get some fresh air. Hana would take him out and Ko would henge into him and take his place inside. Ko would then protect the women inside while Hana attacked from the front with her nin-dogs. It was a simple plan and would probably work as long as they catch the bandits by surprise.

-5-

Kenji finished off what was left of the sake in his bottle. His group had made a pretty good score off of this last group of travelers. They didn't have much in the way of supplies, but they had a pretty good amount of money. They also had a pair of not bad looking women. The women would take care of their urges for a while before he and his men broke them like all the others before. 'Oh well, plenty more where they come from,' he thought.

"Grumble," Kenji's stomach gave an uncomfortable rumble. 'Urgh, I knew those fish were probably too old, I'm gonna be sick,' he thought. Kenji made his way over to the corner of the room to dig a hold in the ground to throw up in. He was recovering and filling the hole back with dirt when he saw what must have been a side effect from the drinking. He could have swore he saw a girl and three dogs killing his men. 'Wait, no, this isn't a hallucination, that's a ninja!' Kenji's eyes widened as he thought for a moment of helping his men kill her, but she had already killed half his men with what looked like a sideways tornado.

'Screw them, I'm getting the fuck out of here,' he thought. He made his way as slowly and unobtrusively to the exit as he could. As he exited the cave, he saw what looked like a little kid. 'Wait a sec, that mask and that symbol on his head... he's a ninja. I'll get some revenge, then get the hell out of here.' he thought as he pulled out a dagger. The kid started shaking when he saw him and Kenji grinned, 'the kid is so scarred that he's shaking... this is gonna be sweet.'

As he reached the halfway point between himself and the kid, the kid's hand suddenly went to his back and pulled out a metal star. The kid threw it right at him! Kenji's eyes widened as the shuriken pierced his neck. Kenji felt himself fall to the ground as he stared in shock at the kid. He felt himself bleeding out as he saw the world going dark. 'What, no, this can't be. I can't die yet, some kid can't... I...'

-5-

Naruto looked at the bandit that had just tried to kill him. He had frozen at first, but managed to kill the bandit before he got too close. He once again felt the bile rushing up from his stomach, but this time fought to keep it down. Naruto remained rooted in his spot, alternating between looking at the man he had just killed and keeping an eye on the cave for any others that tried to leave.

A few minutes later Hana and Ko walked out with the remaining two women. Hana instantly spotted the bandit laying on the ground and looked to Naruto. Naruto gave her a short nod indicating he had killed the man.

-5-

Naruto and Hana were once again resting next to one another. They had taken the man and women back to their home village and were now returning back to Konoha. As a courtesy to Ko, they had slowed down their travel speed a bit, now that they were not in a rush to search for missing people.

"You did good Sakumo," Hana eventually said. She had given Naruto his space for the last few days, but since they were only day away from Konoha, decided to talk with him now.

"Thanks," Naruto replied. "I was really hoping for more of a break before I had to kill again, but I guess ninja can't always choose when or when not to take a life."

"Unfortunately, you're right. Almost every C-rank carries the inherent risk of death and as ninja, it's our job to be prepared. But still, we were able to find survivors and bring them home while at the same time getting rid of the cause. That is a lot better than most of my missions go." Hana said.

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked.

Hana explained, "Most of my missions end when I find out what happened. If I can just find the bodies of the missing people and determine cause of death, that is usually good enough for a mission success. Sometimes, I can't even find the bodies and it goes down in the books as a partial failure."

"Partial failure?" Naruto said confused. "I thought missions were either successful or not successful."

Hana nodded, not surprised at his confusion. "For most missions, that is the case. But for search and rescue, often times the contractor is just a company looking for lost expeditions. The company doesn't really expect us to find anyone, since they don't usually contact us until weeks or months afterward, but they are willing to pay us to look just so they are seen as doing something for the families of the missing. When we can't find anything in that case due to the amount of time that has passed and the area they could be in, the mission goes down as a partial failure. It means that Konoha still gets the money for looking and the mission can't be held against your record as a true mission failure would."

"Why would companies pay to have you look for people they don't expect to find?" Naruto asked.

"It's a way of mitigating legal matters. If the family of a lost employee were to try and create trouble for the company, the company can say it hired ninja to try and find the missing employees and usually get out of whatever lawsuit the families try."

Naruto though about this. He knew that ninja life wouldn't be saving princess's and country's from evil ninja, but he also didn't think it would be so... bureaucratic. Going on missions where no one expected you to succeed seems so... pointless.

"Break's over, let's get back home." Hana announced and once again they were on their way.

-5-

Naruto returned back to the library to continue his studies. He felt that it was time for him to focus more on the combat aspect of ninja life and wanted to see what the library had in terms of offensive jutsus. He looked at the sorry state of the genin library in terms of ninjutsu and genjutsu scrolls before copying down everything they had. Everything they had in terms of ninjutsu consisted of three fire jutsus and one earth jutsu. With genjutsu, he was able to find a book that included a handful of genjutsus and suggested strategies on how to use them.

Naruto took his notes of the ninjutsus and checked out the genjutsu book before headed home. He was still disappointed with what he found by the time he went to bed. Seriously, a campfire starting jutsu, a moderate sized fireball, and a series of small fireballs all coming out of his mouth was all they had in terms of fire jutsu and this was supposed to be fire country! At least they left him one defensive jutsu in the form of an earth wall.

He resolved to spent the next day memorizing the hand seals of the jutsu and finding a spot where he could practice. He knew he needed a lake of some size to safely practice fire jutsu while affording him privacy if he needed to let his face mask down. Thanks to the summer job he had in the academy, he knew quite a few of the training grounds, but still needed to check them out again.

-5-

Naruto settled into training ground seven to begin testing his first offensive jutsu. He had chosen this training ground because there was a small lake he could practice fire jutsu over and it was one of the training grounds closer to the hospital, which he could go to if he screwed up somehow. The only downside about this location was the closeness to the memorial stone, which might attract ninja. However, the ninja that would be going to visit the memorial stone were likely to be older and probably wouldn't interfere with a young ninja learning C and D-rank jutsu.

Naruto decided to start with the campfire jutsu. It was a D-rank jutsu that ninja often used to start fires or send up flares. It should be easier and a good starting place for the other fire jutsus, which seemed similar. He had memorized the four hand seals and practiced them that morning, but he was still feeling apprehensive about trying the jutsu the first time. After all, he was literally going to be starting a fire from within his own body and essentially spitting it out.

"Okay, here we go!" Naruto started the hand seals and prepared his chakra, but stopped halfway through. He couldn't go through with it. He wasn't interrupted or felt something going wrong, in fact he wished that was the case. If he could feel something wrong it would give him an indication that he needed something more. It was just a matter that he was scared of what could happen if he might screw up. Playing with fire is generally a bad idea and starting one inside your own body on purpose is just plain terrifying!

"Whatcha doing?" a voice from behind him said.

Naruto whirled around in surprise, he hadn't heard anyone approaching him, but then he was pretty stressed just now. Naruto saw a jonin standing in front of him wearing a standard jonin outfit and wearing a mask similar to his own. He also had spiky silver hair like a broom and a hitai-ate covering one of his eyes.

Naruto, having calmed down, decided to greet the jonin with a compliment. "Hey, nice face mask!"

The jonin gave what looked like an eye smile. "Yeah, not many can wear a face mask as well as me. But, like I said before, what are you doing here?"

Naruto pouted briefly, trying to figure out if the jonin was saying he couldn't pull off the face mask as well as the jonin. He grimaced slightly when the jonin repeated his question however, not happy that his interruption had returned him to his previous folly. Eventually, he answered the jonin's question. "I'm trying to work up the nerve to try a fire jutsu for the first time."

The jonin considered his question for a bit before answering. "Well, I would ask why a kid who should be in the academy is trying to learn jutsus in the middle of the day..." Naruto made to object when the jonin continued on, "but I see from your hitai-ate that you're a ninja already, so you must have graduated early, right?"

"A little less than half a year ago, yes." Naruto answered.

"So, what problem are you having with learning the jutsu?" the jonin asked.

"At this point, just summoning the courage to try it the first time. I'm just so nervous that if something goes wrong, I will literally be starting a fire from inside my own body." Naruto said, partially relieved just to be telling someone his fears.

"Hmm, what jutsu are you starting with?"

"The campfire jutsu."

The jonin nodded, "A good choice for your first jutsu. One thing that you might want to try if you're nervous is to break the jutsu apart a bit and try to do it in steps."

"Do it in steps?" Naruto asked, confused by what he had said.

"I wouldn't necessary recommend this for all jutsu, especially the more complicated ones, but the campfire jutsu is pretty simple so it should be okay. The hand seals to form to make the jutsu act as a guiding force for your chakra to interact the way it should. The last hand seal in almost all fire jutsus is the tiger seal, because it acts as an ignition to the fire. Maybe you should try the first three hand seals and focus on forming the basis for the fire and expel it without igniting it. Once you feel more comfortable, you can add the last step."

Naruto nodded at what the jonin had said and thought about it. It sounded like a good way of at least simulating how the jutsu would go without igniting it. He moved to thank the jonin when he noticed that the jonin had disappeared. Naruto looked around before seeing him standing in front of the memorial stone. 'Well, if he's standing there, I probably shouldn't interrupt him anymore than I have to. That stone is deeply symbolic to ninja that have lost comrades during missions.' Naruto thought with sympathy for the jonin.

In the end, Naruto turned around and started to practice what the jonin had recommended. He was able to feel the chakra form inside of him before being released into the air. After half an hour of practicing this method, Naruto decided to add the tiger seal to ignite his jutsu. He could feel the flames coming out from his mouth and almost missed the small fireball that had emerged and gone straight to the water. Naruto tested his mouth with his tongue for any damage from the fire, but fortunately there was none. Naruto decided to try the jutsu again, this time adding a bit more chakra and aiming a little higher, so the ball of fire would be slightly larger and travel more distance before hitting the water. As expected the fireball was a bit bigger and Naruto was able to get a much better look at it.

Naruto turned to look once again at the jonin who had remained in front of the memorial stone. Only this time, the jonin was watching him. He appeared to give what looked like an eye smile, but was impossible to tell at the distance. Naruto settled for giving the man a short bow to show his gratitude. When he had risen, the jonin had turned his attention once more to the memorial stone.

At this point Naruto decided to go grab a late lunch before finding a new training spot to work on his earth wall. After all, it wouldn't be very considerate to ruin the tranquility of training ground seven and the memorial stone by creating a huge mess!

-5-

A week later, Naruto was once again arriving at the mission office, ready to take on a new mission. He had learned all four of the ninjutsu he had picked up and made a decent attempt at learning the genjutsu. The genjutsu were more difficult to learn at this point because they needed to be applied to another person to truly know if they were working properly. As loathed as he was to use humans as guinea pigs, he supposed that he could try them on bandits if he happened to run into them.

Naruto was pondering whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing when he walked through the doorway to the C-rank mission office.

"Sakumo!"

Naruto looked over and saw Hana Inuzuka, who appeared to have been pacing in the office waiting area with her three dogs.

"Feel up for joining me for another search and rescue mission?" Hana asked eagerly.

Naruto considered the request before eventually reaching the conclusion that he couldn't find it in his heart to turn her down. He nodded and said "sure."

Hana smiled, "Alright, I was just about to head out so hurry and pack for a search and rescue mission. This is going to be more like the ones I told you about last time, searching for people that probably won't be alive when we find them, so pack for an trip involving lots of wilderness. Meet me at the front gate as soon as you can."

-5-

Naruto picked up a few things at home before heading out to the main gate. Hana was already standing there with her triplet dogs, but no one else. "Just us this time?" Naruto asked her.

"Yep, what's your id number again?" Hana moved over to the gate to give the guard the information he needed. Naruto gave her his number, as she seemed to be in a rush. Naruto used what little time he had left to stretch out his legs a bit for the long run that was almost sure to follow next.

As expected, Hana immediately ordered them to move out, headed south-east, to a portion of Fire country that was largely unexplored and full of dense forest. As soon as they were on their way, Hana explained her rush. "Alright, here is the mission. West-Co mining ordered that a survey be done of an area to the south-east. They were supposed to report to a village nearby every week to send a message to the company. However, they missed their last check-in by five days. The company, sent a messenger bird to Konoha to request a team be sent to look for the group. Normally this would be a standard mission and we could take our time a bit, but the company usually waits a few weeks to give the team more time to check in. This time however, it seems that the grandson of the one of the company vice presidents is in the group, so the company is more willing to send ninja out early. In other words, there is a much greater chance of finding survivors on this mission than in others."

Naruto followed along with her as she quickly explained this, but asked, "Why would you wait for genin then? I remember the last search and rescue, Ko couldn't move as fast as us, and that would have made the journey much longer than you could have done it yourself."

Hana nodded and explained, "It's sort of a catch-22 situation. Yes, I can go faster by myself and usually have to slow down and take more breaks with regular genin, but the search time is significantly reduced when we can split up upon reaching our destination. Plus, the company expects that a team is going to be sent to look for survivors. It wouldn't look good for me to show up alone for too many missions, companies might get the impression that we are not taking their business seriously and go to another village."

Naruto grimaced at the last part. This was the second time that economics and politics had come into a mission and it probably wouldn't be the last. Naruto realized that it must be one of the responsibilities of chunin, to understand the mindset of the contractor and to make sure they were happy with the services of Konoha.

"Well, in that case, why don't we pick up the pace a bit." Naruto said eventually.

Hana looked at him with a brief amount of surprise before smiling and said, "Alright." Hana picked up the pace to that of a low chunin and grinned even more when she saw Naruto easily keeping up.

-5-

Hana increased their traveling speed even more during the journey and due to this, they were able to make it to the village late that night. The villagers confirmed that they hadn't seen anyone from the expedition in almost a week, but were able to give a general direction of where the expedition was last seen.

Apparently the group was headed south, toward a group of mountains that was uninhabited by anyone. One of the hunter's from the village did say that he heard wolves when he got too close to the area however. Hana had informed Naruto that if the group had encountered a large group of wolves in an uninhabited area, the wolves would be more likely to attack.

In the end, Hana decided to set up camp on the outskirts of the village, so they could travel more quickly in the daylight and recover some of the energy they used to get here so fast. Both Naruto and Hana slept without a guard, feeling relatively safe due to the proximity of the village and the senses of the Haimaru to awaken if there was any trouble.

After a short night of five hours of sleep, Naruto and Hana quickly packed up their camp and made their way to the group of mountains. It was early in the morning, so the sun was barely rising over the horizon. The trip only took a couple of hours for the ninja traveling through the trees, however they were able to observe that civilians traveling along the ground would have faced many obstacles in the way of crevices, steep rock outcroppings and rivers. In fact, Hana decided to stop at a few of these to find the area's in which the expedition would have likely tried to pass said obstacles. After their third stop, the Haimaru were able to find a long crevice with a sturdy tree trunk connecting the two sides. The tree appeared to have been cut down recently, so the Haimaru were able to get a collection of scents that probably belonged to the expedition.

Thanks to these, they were able to follow the scents straight to the expedition. They found a temporary camp set up in a flat area near a river. Hana had them observe the area for a few minutes before they moved in to investigate. From what they could see, it didn't look like there was any bandit presence, but bandit's mostly hung out near roads and villages, so that wasn't surprising.

Hana approached the tents and called out, "Hello! Is anyone here?" Both of them heard a groan coming from one of the tents, when a voice responded back. "Is someone there? Help! Is there a doctor with you?"

Hana and Naruto looked into the tent that had the voice coming from it. Inside were two men that looked to be injured. "What happened?" Hana asked as she pulled out a scroll that contained some medical equipment sealed inside.

The man who appeared to be less injured replied. "We were digging for mineral samples when we were attacked from behind by wolves. We never saw them coming and they killed half of us before we were able to kill or scare them off."

Hana began unwrapping the bandages to look at the damage to the other, unresponsive but still alive, man. "Is there anyone else still alive?" Hana asked as she worked.

"Our leader, Jiro. He was scouting out other area's at the time of attack and only managed to arrive at the end. He hauled both of us here and tried to treat us as best he could." the man said as Hana began looking at the damage to his legs.

"Where is he now?" Naruto asked.

"He went out to gather wood for a signal fire, hoping the villagers might see it. I told him he should try to make it to the village for help, but he said that he's already stopped the wolves from making a second attempt once already and if he left we wouldn't stand a chance."

Hana nodded, "Sakumo, take two of my dogs and go look for him. Bring him back here."

Naruto nodded and patted two of the Haimaru's heads, to motion which ones should lead him to Jiro. Within five minutes, Naruto found the young man gathering firewood for what appeared to be a desperate attempt at a signal fire.

"Jiro?" Naruto asked, as he approached the young man.

The man turned and looked confused for a moment before remembering his situation. "Hey, are you traveling with a doctor, I..."

Naruto, who figured this man had no clue as to how to explain the presence of a kid appearing out of nowhere, decided to tell the man who he was. "My name is Sakumo Hayashi, I am one of the ninja West-Co mining hired to find your expedition. My team leader is currently treating your men and needs your presence."

Jiro looked doubtful at first when he heard that the child was a ninja, but perked up at the comment of a leader treating his men. "Let's go," he said as Naruto finished his last sentence.

Upon returning to the camp, Naruto and Jiro found Hana mixing what appeared to be a healing salve for the wounds the men had been inflicted with. Jiro looked around before asking, "Is it just the two of you?"

Hana saw the expression he was making and decided to repeat the words she shared with Naruto previously. "When we got the request, Konoha notified myself, one of the lead trackers to head out and find you as fast as possible. Due to the earliness of the day, Sakumo was the only genin I could find that was able to keep up with me. We could have waited for a bigger party, but we wouldn't have arrived for at least another day, probably two."

Jiro nodded at this remark. "Well, thank you for arriving when you did. I'm not sure we would have lasted if those damn wolves had attacked again."

-5-

Transporting the injured men back to the village was a bit of a pain, as there were only two of them, and Naruto wasn't exactly big enough to carry one of the men. Strong enough maybe, but big enough to carry even the least injured without aggravating the injuries, no. In the end, Hana showed Naruto how to make a stretcher and they were able to make three separate trips back to the village, leaving the Haimaru behind to guard the survivors from any more wolves.

Hana used this as an opportunity to tell Naruto another reason why she liked having genin accompany her. It made relocating survivors much easier. Naruto was forced to agree, as having two separate trips carrying a stretcher was not the most pleasant experience.

Still, the mission was a success and the team leader, Jiro, was the important grandson of the company executive, so the company would probably be happy. The injured members, had admitted to thinking that Jiro was just a spoiled kid in a leadership position prior to the expedition. They expected him to run away as soon as the wolves made themselves known. Boy were they surprised when the spoiled kid not only fought the wolves off, but refused to abandon them. Naruto imagined that his reputation within the company would increase as a result. And because he was saved by Konoha ninja, he would probably be more likely to hire them if he was ever in a position to do so. Politics and economics again.

By the time Naruto and Hana had arrived back at Konoha, Naruto decided that he was developing a fondness for these types of missions. He hoped that in the future Hana could teach he more about tracking. In fact, it was that idea that led him to a certain remark to Hana that he almost regretted.

"Hey Hana," Naruto said as they were about to part ways in Konoha. "If you need someone to accompany you on these missions, feel free to come to my apartment to ask me."

Hana looked surprised before grinning. "Are you sure, Sakumo? Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night."

Naruto pressed his advantage. "Just promise me you'll teach me how to track when you can."

"Done," was all Hana said to that.

-5-

For the next few months, Hana requested that Naruto join her on missions almost every time she had one. Twice now, she had woken him from his sleep to join her on missions in the middle of the night. On both of those missions, it had been just Hana and him, and her dogs of course. Other times, she had tracked him down wherever he was (usually a training ground or the library) to accompany her and the other genin she had chosen.

As promised, she had taught him quite a bit about tracking so far. She had lent him books the Inuzuka had on basic tracking and had taught him how to channel chakra to his nose, in order to track things down by scent. Naruto was still quite new at it, and wrong more often than he was right when it came to following the correct scent, but it was a pretty good start for a non-Inuzuka.

Hana had asked him to join her this afternoon for lunch at the Korean BBQ restaurant at noon for lunch. Naruto wondered what that was about, but trusted Hana enough to know she probably wouldn't be wasting his time. Although, Naruto did make sure to wear a face mask with a slit in the mouth area for eating, so that he wouldn't have to reveal his whisker marks to her.

Naruto entered the restaurant and immediately saw Hana sitting in a corner booth. He walked over and sat across from her. "Hey, what's up."

Hana smiled at him, motioning to the waitress to place their orders. When that was done, Hana hedged for a few seconds before asking him what his plans were for the future.

"What do you mean, if you have a mission I'm free, but you probably don't mean that." Naruto replied, a bit confused as to her question.

"I mean, what are your career plans for the future." Hana clarified.

"Oh, well I guess my original plan was to join the genin reserve corp for a year to make sure I was ready join a genin team. The academy year ends in 3-4 months, so I guess I'll try to apply for a team." Naruto said, after some thought.

Hana nodded before continuing on, "that's what I assumed you would say. I'd like to propose something else though. I recommend you to take my place in search and rescue as a chunin, so I can apply for the medic-nin program."

Naruto stared at her for a full minute. "That would mean that I would have to be promoted to chunin. I'm pretty sure I'm not ready for that."

Hana grinned before responding. "You're a lot closer than you think. You've probably heard of the chunin exams as a way most people receive the promotion." Naruto nodded. "But actually only a handful of people get promoted that way every year. Most people are given regular promotions either from one of the elder's or the jonin commander. In order to get that promotion, you need to show them that you are ready and that you are needed at the commander level."

"So, since you want to leave, and I am someone with a lot of experience with search and rescue missions, I would be your natural successor. Is that what you're saying." Naruto concluded.

"Yes. With a recommendation from me and your history of search and rescue missions, you would be a prime candidate."

Naruto thought about this for a moment. If he took her offer, he would be a chunin years ahead of schedule and would know what kind of missions he would be getting for the next few years. He considered the pros versus the cons. The pros were: becoming a chunin, getting access to better training materials, and advancing his career. The cons on the other hand were: being locked in the position until he could find a replacement, closer scrutiny from superiors, and difficulty dealing with older subordinates.

By now their food had arrived and they were both eating silently, Hana giving him time to think about the situation. By the end of the meal, Naruto decided he couldn't let this opportunity pass him by. Most genin searched high and low for the opportunity to rise to chunin. But, if he was going to do this, he was going to get some concessions out of Hana.

Naruto looked at Hana with resolve. "Alright, but I have some conditions."

Hana smiled before pausing and motioning him to speak.

"First of all, you will continue to take me on missions for a few months. During the time that we are off duty, you will teach me to the best of your ability. By the time I take over, I want to be as good as a non-Inuzuka can be at tracking."

Hana nodded at that, willing to train him if it meant she could move her career towards her passion. "Okay, we can..."

"Second," Naruto interrupted, showing he was not done with his conditions. "You will train me to be as good a chunin in other, non-tracking fields. If I become a chunin, I don't just want it to be because I had only one skill."

"Third, I've been trying to learn genjutsu, but have no one to test my skills on except the occasional bandit. I realize this might be awkward, but I need someone to give me feedback on what works and what doesn't." With that, Naruto nodded that those were his conditions.

Hana thought about the last two, she had no problem with the first request, after all, if he couldn't handle the missions she would likely be drafted back to take over again and that would be a black mark on her record. Training him to be as good as a chunin would take some hard work and would cut into her time studying for medical training, but if it meant that she would be free of her constant search and rescue missions, she was willing to put in the time. The same could be said for his genjutsu training.

"Deal." Hana finally decided.

-5-

Naruto was on his way to his first off-duty lesson with Hana. He had been planning on applying for a genin team, but after thinking about it, this was probably a better option. Now that he had time to think, he probably would have had a similar experience to the one he had the last year if he had just applied for a genin team to start with. A few months of D-ranks and training followed by a series of C-rank missions. The paranoia that had worked itself into his daily life as Naruto Uzumaki the monster had clearly seeped into his existence of Sakumo Hayashi the unknown.

Naruto wondered what his life would be like now as a team genin. Would he be best friends with his teammates or would be be constantly at odds with them? Would his sensei be a supportive leader and teacher or a damaged jonin just drifting through the rest of his life? Either way, Naruto had made his choice. In a few months, he would be a chunin, and wouldn't experience a genin team until he took one for himself.

Resolved with his choices in life, Naruto knocked on the entrance to the Inuzuka clan compound. As expected, as soon as he did, he heard what sounded like dozens of dogs starting to bark as one. He always wondered how clans knew someone was at the gate without stationing a permanent guard there. The Inuzuka clan had dogs that would bark instantly, but he had no idea how the other clans did it.

As he was expected to be here at this time, it was Hana who answered the door. "C'mon in, Sakumo."

He was led inside where he immediately encountered a second gate and fence, which held back dozens of dogs from getting out when the main door was opened. Hana opened the gate enough for him to squeeze through as half a dozen dogs literally surrounded him trying to get his attention. Naruto patted a few of their heads but that only seemed to make them more excited. Hana seemed content to just watch as the dogs, mostly puppies, jumped up to try and play with him. Eventually a new voice was heard coming from the main house. "Hey, settle down!"

The dogs, for the most part, sat down on the ground obediently, although a few a them looked like they wanted to keep playing. A woman was approaching from the distance. She was wearing a standard jonin vest and had spiky brown hair with Inuzuka face markings. Naruto noted however that she had a distinctly more feral look to her than Hana did. As she neared, she looked at Naruto with a questioning expression. "So, who are you?"

Hana eventually decided to speak. "Mother, this is Sakumo Hayashi, one of the genin I prefer to work with on my missions. I'm going to try and train him to replace me."

Naruto straightened out as Hana addressed her mother. He knew from speaking with Hana that her mother was the clan matriarch. "Inuzuka-sama, it's an..."

"Nonono, none of that now." Hana's mother interrupted him immediately. "My name is Tsume, Inuzuka's don't stand on formalities like all the other uptight clans."

Naruto looked over to see Hana smirking evilly, enjoying watching him get chewed out by her mother. 'Well, if that's funny to her, let's see how she likes this...' Naruto thought, coming up with a prank. "Thank you Tsume-san, I'm very grateful Hana-sama is giving me the chance to prove myself."

"Hana-sama?" The elder Inuzuka said questioningly as she turned to her daughter.

Hana, surprised at this turn of events, quit smirking as she saw her mother's gaze. "What? no... Sakumo what are you saying, it's just Hana."

Naruto decided to give her a wink while Tsume's back was to him. "But the last time I didn't call you Hana-sama you had your dogs chase me for hours."

"WHAT! Sakumo! Say that isn't true!" Hana panicked as she saw her mother's eyes narrow.

Luckily, she was saved as Naruto couldn't take it and started laughing out loud. "Sorry Tsume-san, Hana looked like she was enjoying watching me get scolded a little too much."

"Jerk," Hana punched him on the arm before leading him away from her mother.

-5-

Tsume watched the two training out in the yard for the last few hours. They started out with a bit of taijutsu, in which her daughter was rougher on him than she probably normally would have been, but the young boy seemed to be at least able to keep up. The boy's form was a bit crude, but not bad for a genin, especially for a genin his age.

After their taijutsu warm-up, Hana led him to the portion of the yard where Inuzuka's and their dogs usually trained their senses. Sakumo seemed to be a somewhat novice at the subject, but appeared to have at least some previous training. It would be at least a few weeks until he was ready to use it in the field. As Hana was introducing him to various scents and what they meant, Tsume pondered how the last few months had been for Hana.

In the last few months, Hana had been a bit more relaxed both before and after missions. Just a few months ago, Tsume could tell that the missions were starting to get to her daughter. Being constantly on-call and having to go on many missions solo were beginning to affect her. Tsume was always concerned when Hana couldn't find any genin to accompany her, but her missions were usually too low rank to necessitate them and had to be completed as quickly as they came in. Recently however, Hana had seemed less stressed about this fact and had revealed that a genin with a lot of potential had given her permission to seek him out for mission in the future, even waking him up in the middle of the night.

Tsume had to admit, seeing a boy his age was discomforting as it made her maternal instincts want to ban him from missions, but the way that he had interacted with her daughter showed that they had a friendship that was developing nicely. She had been originally outraged that her daughter forced a young child to address her as "Hana-sama," but that it was all a joke made her laugh now that she thought about it.

She would look forward to seeing Sakumo for the next few months and getting to know him a bit better.

-5-

Three months later – Naruto age 10

"Urgh," Hana grunted as she felt she took another hit in the back. When Sakumo had asked to test genjutsu, she never thought it would turn into this.

Hana had spent the last few months spending almost every day training with her successor. During missions, he had taken the lead and did all the tracking with Hana watching over him, supervising and correcting mistakes. At first, their was a lot of trial and error for the young genin, but recently, the mistakes had been growing less and less common. The last mission that they had gone on, Hana corrected zero of the things he did and walked through the mission merely as an observer. He was ready.

His taijutsu was still a shade less advanced than most rookie chunin were, even at the beginning, but that could be explained by the fact that he was still very young. In fact, Sakumo was able to recognize that with the way he know performed his genjutsus.

The traditional way to use genjutsu was to distract or terrify an individual into being subdued by fear. That is not what Sakumo did. Sakumo instead used genjutsu to make small unnoticeable changes that Hana struggled to identify. Sakumo made it so that in a fight with him, you could trip over an unseen rock or root that he had made invisible. In a fist fight with him, he was capable of making it seem that he was striking at your head, only to try and block what turned out to be an illusion as he struck you in the body. He was even capable of hiding weapons in his hands under the illusion they were empty. When she first found out he could do that, it had terrified her. Sakumo would be a dangerous person fight unprepared.

She had put in her request for a hearing to determine whether or not he was ready for promotion yesterday. Soon, a decision would be made.

-5-

Shikaku Nara reviewed his paperwork for the next request. He usually spent two or three days dealing with his duties as Jonin Commander before trying to go on a mission with his old teammates. The Hokage, who was starting to get older however, was starting to give him more authority in hopes of lessening his own workload. Unfortunately, he couldn't say no to the Hokage, so that meant less time for easy missions with his friends.

Shikaku looked over the request. Hana Inuzuka, the current "chunin on-call for low rank search and rescue missions" was proposing that she had found a successor and would like him to promoted so she could enter the medic-nin program. It was in his power to grant regular promotion for a genin to chunin, but he liked to interview the candidates himself to make sure they were ready. In this case, he would definitely be doing it, as he found out that the genin was only ten years old.

He let his secretary know to send in Hana first. As she entered, he took one more look at her file. Hana Inuzuka, age fifteen, chunin for search and rescue missions for the last two years, studying to become a medic-nin. "Take a seat," he said as he saw her enter the room.

"First of all, I see you have a good mission history and would like to enter the medic-nins, an admirable goal. I want to make sure your choice for successor is ready for the responsibility. How did you arrive at the choice to nominate...Sakumo Hayashi" Shikaku began, as he dug out Sakumo's name from the pile of paperwork.

"I first met Sakumo-san when I was looking for genin for a mission one early morning. He had realized that if he showed up early to the mission office, he could choose which missions to go on, rather than waiting a few hours and begging to go on a mission period." Hana said, to highlight the fact that Sakumo had the intelligence to both figure out the system and choose his own missions. "I remember it because on his previous mission he had his first kill and was looking for a mission that didn't involve killing. I immediately took notice of him because he was able to keep up with me at my traveling speed and was confused as to why the other genin accompanying us could not keep up. He performed well on the mission and although the mission later involved killing bandits, he was able to make his second kill while defending one of the rescue victims."

Shikaku nodded and made notes.

"The second mission with him was a week later, when it was just the two of us. We traveled to the target site at chunin level speed this time and he kept up with me without problem. Because of that, we were able to arrive in time to rescue three people who had survived being attacked by wolves, two of whom where injured. After that mission, he told me I was free to search him out for future missions."

"From that point on, whenever I had a mission, I immediately took him with me. He would accompany me when I received missions during the middle of the night and when I was able to gather other genin." Hana continued.

"At what point did you offer him to become your successor?" Shikaku asked.

"About three months ago. He agreed on the condition that I train him in tracking and that I help him get his other skills up to chunin level." Hana defended.

"How would you access his skill level?" Shikaku said as he turned to page to take her answer down.

"His tracking is as good as a non-Inuzuka can be. I let him take the lead on the last few missions and he only made very minor mistakes. The kind of mistakes that it usually takes even Inuzukas a few dozen missions worth of experience to refine. His taijutsu is a bit below average for a chunin, but for his age is awesome. I've seen him do ninjutsu, but only a few fire jutsus and one earth jutsu. He has a real talent for genjutsu on the other hand. He uses it not to intimidate or subdue, but to fool. He can literally make himself appear to be a weak target only for him to strike under cover of genjutsu before you even know what hit you!" Hana raved.

"In fact, I'd say that intelligence is one of his best assets. Despite the fact that obviously he would need to be intelligent to graduate early from the academy, his intelligence seems to be more tied to the real world than it does to be book smart. He knows that his body is still developing, so he's focused on building up his other skills first."

"Very well." Shikaku concluded. "For the record, you feel that he is ready to assume the duties of a chunin?"

"Absolutely," Hana said with full conviction.

Shikaku nodded before dismissing her and asking her to send him in.

As he observed, the genin that walked into the room appeared to be quite young. The fact that he was up for promotion only a year after he graduated early was not too surprising, but it was surprising that it was not happening in a chunin exam. "Please take a seat Sakumo-san, I have a few questions to ask before a determination can be made."

"First of all," Shikaku began, "please tell me why I see you applied for the genin reserve corp instead of joining a genin team like everyone else."

"Well Nara-sama, as you know I graduated early from the academy, but what you don't know is that I feel like I graduated too early. I was skipped passed the third year as I already knew most of the academy jutsus and was entered into the fourth year. I thought I would have two years to refine my skills and make sure I was prepared to enter a team comprised mostly of kids that were raised in a ninja clan. I felt like when I had been skipped up to the graduating class halfway through the year, I probably missed out on a lot of the less important, in regards to the academy grading system, subjects." Naruto began to explain.

"I decided to take a year to train and study using the genin library. I would take a few missions to get some experience before applying for a genin team the next year. I realize I might have been a little misguided about the level of the other graduates, but I don't think it worked out too badly. I was fully intending to apply for a genin team when Hana proposed to make me her successor."

Shikaku nodded his head as he began to understand Sakumo's way of thought. He saw that Sakumo was originally from the fire temple, so it isn't inconceivable that he had a slightly unrealistic opinion of clan raised children. 'Not that he's wrong compared to clans like the Uchiha,' he thought of the clan that basically raised their children to be warriors from day one. "What sorts of training and studying did you do?"

Naruto internally reviewed what he did before answering. "Well, first I went to the genin library to plan out my year, and that's where I started to realize that maybe I should have just gone into a genin team. The genin library is pretty pitiful, I was honestly expecting a bit more."

Shikaku grimaced slightly as he thought about the rather bare shelves in the genin section in the library.

"But, I was still able to study quite a bit. I studied: greater chakra control, trap making, strategy, weapons, field medicine, and etiquette. I signed up for a week long course at the hospital to study field medicine. During that time I took D-ranks and scouted out the best times to look for C-ranks. Later on I learned all the elemental ninjutsu and genjutsu they had in the genin section." Naruto boasted, trying to make sure the jonin commander knew he wasn't wasting his time.

Shikaku made more notes on his papers before he decided to change topics a bit. "Very well, let me shift topics a bit. What do you think are the primary roles and responsibilities of a chunin? What does it mean to be chunin?"

"Well, I suppose for me, it's a bit easier because I know what my primary role as a chunin will be. I will be in charge of taking most of the search and rescue missions. I will have to be constantly on-call, ready to head out in an instant if a mission comes in. The greater role or a chunin however, is to act as both a leader and a protector of his team. I will have to assert my authority, especially due to my age, to make sure that any genin under me understand that I am in charge of the missions and that I am capable of both making the correct calls in the field and making sure my team is safe. Above that, I have learned from watching my chunin commanders over the last year that a chunin also needs to consider the economic and political actions of each decision."

Shikaku's eyebrow's raised at that point before telling him to explain.

"There are many ninja villages that people can hire to do work. Konoha ninja have to make sure that we are providing good service in the forms that they can appreciate. For example, when Hana is performing a search and rescue mission, there is a good chance that she could find and escort the victims to safety much faster if she were traveling alone than with a team of genin that can't keep up with her. But if she didn't work with a team, the employers might see this as a sign that we are not taking their contract seriously. In order to make sure our clients are happy with our service, a chunin has to weigh every decision in the field. In short, it's just as or possibly even more important that chunin are smart as well as strong."

Shikaku internally smiled. 'This kid gets it. He's ready for chunin.'

-5-

Both Naruto and Hana stood in front of Shikaku as he completed the paperwork. "Hana Inuzuka, your request for the promotion of Sakumo Hayashi is accepted. Sakumo Hayashi, you are hereby promoted to the rank of chunin. Congratulations."

Both Hana and Naruto broke out into grins and hugged each other.

"Hana-san, you are free of your post and allowed to apply for medical-nin training. Sakumo-san, you are now the chunin on-call for low ranking search and rescue missions. I expect you to carry out your duties well."

-5-

AN's

11K words in one chapter, wow.

City names and people names are just random Japanese names, to be used once and probably never seen again.

I'm pretty proud of the way this chapter went, it you paid attention to my comments, you know that my next chapter will be mostly a filler chapter for Naruto's time in charge of search and rescue. I considered a time skip and summary of what happened, but eventually resolved to just have a single chapter regarding his time there. (so don't judge too harshly)

Hana is introduced! Just friends at the moment but later (like when Naruto is mid-teens) it will turn into more of a romance.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Naruto age 11, one year after promotion.

Naruto and his team were exploring a relatively unknown section of tea country. Due to a slight break in search and rescue missions, in which Naruto hadn't had any missions in almost a month, Konoha gave him an exploratory mission instead. A client wanted a Konoha team to explore a mountainous region of tea country for any unknown settlements, mineral samples, and any paths that could be found to get through mountain group. The mission had tried to be done by a civilian team earlier, only to run into problems due to the number of treacherous routes they had tried.

Naruto was leading yet another group of whiny genin to accompany him. If there was one thing he now hated more than any other, it was a group of whiny genin. "Why is a kid leading us!?" he could hear a shrieking voice in his head. "I don't want to go that way, let's go this way," another annoying voice had said in his mind. He had heard them all and he was sick of it. Naruto was starting to go to bed hoping he would be awoken in the middle of the night, just so he could have an excuse to go on missions alone.

Over the last year, Naruto had faithfully served in his position as the chunin on-call for search and rescue missions. He had been on dozens of missions and had led many genin safely to either the victims or the bodies of the victims.

There was one thing that made it all worth it however. One thing that made him willing to put up with the constant sameness of missions, the whiny genin, and the slow genin. That one thing was, the chunin section of the library. The chunin section, unlike the genin section contained incredibly more information. It seems that when librarians are deciding what section to place ninja information, the default is the chunin section. If information is incredibly basic, it goes to the genin section. If information is classified high level or more dangerous, it goes to the jonin section. But, by default, everything originally goes to the chunin section!

Naruto had already been able to learn quite a few new skills including a deeper understanding of all the skills he had previously studied. He maximized his training schedule when he was off duty, never knowing when a mission was about to come up and take him away. He also followed a previous idea of finding ways he could be training when he wasn't doing anything.

On that subject, an area he had been concentrating on lately was elemental chakra control. The chunin library contained dozens of ways to train elemental control and many of them he could do when he was resting and waiting for genin to recover from traveling speed. He had bought a piece of chakra paper from a ninja store to find out his primary element and surprise, surprise, it was fire. He supposed that was expected, seeing as how this was fire country. Either way, he had already completed every fire control exercise in the chunin library and was trying to invent new ones to increase his already strong affinity. He also had copies of the control exercises for other elements, hoping to at least be able to use them as efficiently as he could, even if they weren't as easy as fire.

"Sakumo-san, I found what looks like a pass to the other side of the mountain." One of the genin interrupted his train of thought.

Naruto looked at the genin, Shin-san was one of the genin he had worked with before and was once annoying as the others. But, since he had done missions with him before, he at least understood that Naruto was a chunin and this was not some joke.

"Let's wait for the others then we'll check it out together." Naruto told the older genin. His team was currently in the center of the mountain cluster. There were no hidden settlements inside, like the client had suspected and they had already collected mineral samples. The previous team had done an acceptable job of looking for ways into the cluster looking on the east side, but they had missed a cave that seemed to go through almost the entire mountain. A fortunate find his team had made when looking for a place to set up camp. Now that they were inside, a search for exits should be easier than looking for entrances.

Fifteen minutes later his team had assembled in the meeting spot to review their findings. Indeed Shin was the only one who found a passable route as the others were either blocked or too treacherous. Five minutes later, they were on their way to test out this route. The passage he had found was a bit steep at a few moments, but with a little work, a civilian crew should make it passable. Naruto took all this down on his sketch of the area and made sure to leave ribbons tied to significant trees or rocks in order to highlight the path to any others who would be following.

"Alright, let's head back to Kawamoto to report our findings." Naruto announced to his team. Naruto prepared himself for the trip of running at low genin speed for an hour, waiting half an hour for them to recover while training his earth chakra control, before trying to run again for an hour.

-6-

Now that Naruto was back in Konoha he was ready to begin a plan that he had been considering for the last few months. During his last extended break during missions, he had spent considerable time in the library. While he was there, he came across a section of a book detailing the different types of clone jutsus and their advantages for each type of situation. That is where he came upon it, kage bunshin, the shadow clone. The book didn't have the instructions for how to do it, but they did include the advantages: a solid clone, made of chakra, and memory transfer.

Memory transfer! With this, his training could skyrocket and his missions would be even easier. The only problem, it was a forbidden jutsu restricted to jonin. However, Naruto hoped that he could apply for an exception to the rule. If he could prove that he was capable of using the jutsu effectively, despite the high chakra cost, it would greatly increase the efficacy of his mission. For him to be able to split into even two copies would double the area he could cover while proving to clients that he was the right person for the job.

Naruto had made the request to the jonin commander, Shikaku Nara, before he had left for this last mission and he hoped that now he was back he would receive a response. Indeed, upon returning to the mission office to report his mission success, he found they had a note to stop by his office the next time he was in. Naruto hurried over to Shikaku's office to plead his case.

-6-

Shikaku heard a knock on his door when his secretary entered telling him that Sakumo Hayashi was here to see him. 'Ah yes, his request from a few days ago.' "Come in Sakumo-san."

"Nara-sama." Sakumo greeted respectfully.

"How did your last mission go?" Shikaku said, making small talk as he sat down again.

"Pretty well, we were hired to find a path through a treacherous mountain cluster and we stumbled onto a cave that was able to take us inside. Once there we had an easier time finding a way out of the other side, due to the fact that the inside was a smaller search area. We also collected samples and reported back." Naruto replied taking a seat across from the commander.

"Good, good. As to your request, your reasons for wanting to learn the shadow clone are well stated, but I think you may be underestimating the high chakra cost of the jutsu however." The jonin commander said.

Naruto nodded, expecting this. "I did see that part and understand that chakra will be split evenly among my clones, thereby draining me much more quickly, but I've come to understand that my chakra reserves are quite big for a chunin and very big for my age. I have trained even more extensively in chakra control exercises now that I have access to that wonderful chunin library." Naruto said that last part with a wide grin, making sure Nara-sama understood how happy he was to have access to it. "Even if I can only make one copy, I think it would still be a good investment. Especially with the sort of missions I take."

Shikaku considered his request. Sakumo-san did have a good mission record and was adjusting to life as a chunin fairly well. It wasn't completely rare for a ninja to have access to at least one jutsu that was a little higher than them. "Alright, I'll give you a shot. Please take notice however that this is a secret jutsu to Konoha and not to reveal how to perform it to anyone else."

Shikaku wrote his authority down on a piece of paper and stamped it with a stamp from one of his drawers. "Take this to training ground seven and give it to the masked man hanging around there. He will be the one to teach you this jutsu."

"Masked man?" Naruto said.

"Yes, he wears a mask just like yours. His name is Kakashi Hatake and frequently spends his free time hanging around the memorial stone." Shikaku replied.

Naruto thought for a moment recalling an earlier experience. "Does he wear a Konoha hitai-ate over one of his eyes?"

"Yes, that's him. How did you know?" Shikaku asked.

"I ran into him once when I was learning how to do my first fire jutsu. He helped me out." Naruto recalled, fondly remembering the days when he only had the lousy genin library to learn from.

-6-

Naruto approached training ground seven to look for the jonin to get started on learning what he hoped would be his new favorite jutsu. He spotted the man standing in front of the memorial stone and experienced a moment of deja vu. This was exactly the same way he had been standing almost two years ago and the jonin commander knew right where to find him. Naruto briefly stopped to consider what that meant for the jonin. Actually, it wasn't hard to consider, this jonin had clearly lost either someone or many someones on missions. Naruto felt like he was intruding going up to him to ask him for his help once again.

The jonin became aware of his presence however. "Are you here for the stone?"

Naruto was jerked out of his line of thought. "No. Hatake-san? I don't know if you remember me, but you once helped me over there when I was first learning how to perform fire jutsus." Naruto pointed over to the calm lake.

Kakashi looked at him briefly before he remembered the incident he was referring to. "Oh, hey, a chunin already. Since you know my name, I guess you're here for something?"

Naruto nodded before pulling out the paper the jonin commander had given him. He handed the paper over to Kakashi and said, "I applied to learn a forbidden jutsu and Nara-sama approved. He said you could teach me? I was surprised when he described you that I had met you before."

Kakashi glanced over the paper with his good eye and looked for any sign of forgery. "Well... Sakumo-san, shall we get started." Kakashi said as he looked over the paper again to find this kids name.

Kakashi then instructed him on the hand seals, the chakra requirements, and the usage of the jutsu. He was quite surprised when Naruto, who had prepared for this by learning the earth clone jutsu, had learned the jutsu within a few minutes.

Naruto successfully made three clones with ease as he wondered what it would have been like if he had access to this jutsu instead of all the time he had spent learning the first one. 'Well, if I hadn't learned the first one, my chakra control would probably still be terrible now.'

-6-

A few days later...

Naruto was walking to a training ground to try out an earth jutsu he had found in the chunin library. He was almost to one of his favorite training spots when he heard some barking from a nearby training ground. 'Wait a minute, I know those barks,' Naruto thought as he made a quick detour. Like he suspected, Hana and her dog trio were in the area.

"Hana!" Naruto yelled to his old friend. Immediately her head rose to see him and the Haimaru triplets ran over to greet him. Naruto spent the next few minutes petting and greeting the dogs, who seemed especially hyperactive today.

Hana stood up from where she was sitting and walked over to meet him. "Hey Sakumo, here for some training? How are the missions going?"

Naruto continued petting the dogs as he replied, "Yep, trying to learn a new ninjutsu from the library. Missions are going... well, I'm sure you can imagine."

Hana grinned. "Yeah, looks like you're starting to get a little sick of them, huh?"

Naruto smirked ruefully. "It's the genin I'm getting sick of. At least you were closer to them in age. Every mission I get, all I hear is "why should we listen to you, you're just a kid." I swear, I'm starting to look for excuses to go on missions alone." Naruto imitated the voices he had been hearing in the most irritating way he could.

Hana shook her head as she sympathized for him. "Well, I had a few older genin do that to me, but not that bad."

"Yeah well, I know what I signed up for. I just thought they would get over it after a few months. Anyway, how are you? What's up with the Haimaru, they seem more hyperactive than I've ever seen them?" Naruto decided to ask when one of the dogs tried to jump on his shoulders.

Hana sighed, "it's my medical-nin training. At this point it's mostly studying books and shadowing medical-nin in the hospital, so I don't have much time for them. Even today, I still have to study most of the time." Hana held up a book to show that she was reading more than training.

"Man, wish I could help you but all I know is what they taught me in the week long training program that genin can take." Naruto truly wished he could help her, Hana had taught him a lot and he felt like he owed her.

Hana smiled. "Don't worry about it, this is what I signed up for. Besides, it looks like you have other things to worry about."

"What do you mean?"

Hana pointed behind him to an administrative genin that was approaching them. Somehow, she knew that he wasn't here for her. "Hayashi-san? A search and rescue mission has just come in. Here are the details." He handed Naruto a scroll and left to return to the administrative building.

Naruto sighed before opening up the scroll to see a standard search and rescue mission for an expedition that had not reported in for a month. 'Standard mission to find a group they have already written off as dead,' Naruto thought.

"Urgent?" Hana asked.

"No, looks like just a routine search for an expedition they've already written off." Naruto replied to his predecessor.

Hana nodded before looking at her dogs. "Hey Sakumo... can I ask you a favor?"

Naruto, happy to help, nodded and said, "sure, what do you need."

"Why don't you take the Haimaru brothers with you on this mission." Hana said looking at her dogs.

The three dogs, completely capable of understanding what was being said, perked up at this request.

Naruto's eyes widened. "Are you sure? Have you ever been apart from them for more than a day?"

Hana nodded. "Like I said, I've been studying a lot lately. They've been really hyperactive because of that. In fact, they haven't been on a real mission in almost six months."

Naruto nodded, understanding her reasoning. "Alright, I can do that. What do you say guys? Feel like having a boy's only week?" Naruto asked the pups.

All three barked enthusiastically, happy to be doing something.

"Alright, can I seal up some dog food to take with me at your compound before I leave?" Naruto asked, remembering what it was like back in the good old days of search and rescue.

"Sure, lets go pick it up now." Hana said.

-6-

6 months later

Naruto thought back to the mission he had performed with the haimaru triplets. It had indeed been a routine mission, but unlike the others, he had decided not to take any genin, since he had backup in the form of Inuzuka dogs. They had a nice run to where the expedition was reported to be and the dogs seemed to enjoy the challenge of sniffing out a month old trail from an unknown group of humans. They had picked up the trail of a few bandit groups before finding the bodies of the expedition. The fact that the bodies had been stripped of all valuables and had sword wounds still visible pointed at one of the bandit groups as being responsible.

The dogs were able to determine which group had been responsible and Naruto had been able to recover an expedition log after dealing with the bandits. At that point, Naruto and his companions for the trip decided to take the long way back to Konoha.

That trip had been a relaxing experience for Naruto and reminded him of the old days, when it was just him, Hana, and the dogs. But, like all things, it came to an end and he was back to running missions with whiny genin.

This time, he had received a mission at noon while he had been sitting down for lunch. This of course meant that he would be walking into a mission office full of genin looking to get on a mission, so he could at least have his choice of subordinates. When he walked in to the room, he noted that their was a jonin led genin team standing in the front. When Naruto announced to the room that he was looking for genin to accompany him on a search and rescue C-rank, the jonin immediately asked to speak with him. The jonin revealed that he would be going on an A-rank mission that called for his skills and he wanted his genin team to go on a mission during his absence.

Naruto handed the jonin the mission scroll and asked if his genin had any experience with bandits, a likely scenario with his missions. The jonin looked over the request and replied that his students had experienced a few bandit eradication missions in the past, so they would not fall apart when confronted with them. The nice thing about this was that the jonin was able to order his genin to follow the orders of Sakumo for the duration of the mission, which meant they would not be conflicted on whether to obey someone younger than them.

This sort of mission was his bread and butter, locate an expedition extracting mineral samples near the border of river country that had gone missing a week and a half ago. Naruto and his genin team were almost at the last known location.

"Sakumo-taicho? What do we do when we reach the last known location?" Kaori, a member of the genin team, asked.

"We won't know precisely what to do until we see it, but locating their last known camp site and tracking their movement will hopefully lead us to them. Usually if that doesn't work, scouting out the locale bandits and villages in the area will give us clues on who has seen them last." Naruto lectured. "Mostly, I'm looking for a recent scent that belongs to one of them so I can track them."

"Are you an Inuzuka? I thought they were the only ones who could track by scent?" Taro questioned.

"The Aburame can track by scent as well." Eiji, a stoic Aburame himself, replied to his teammate.

"Anyone who is trained to can track by scent. It requires you to channel chakra to the nose in a precise way. I was trained by an Inuzuka, so I was able to learn how. But it is true that the Inuzuka are experts better than I will likely ever be." Naruto answered patiently, glad that these genin were at least showing some respect.

They arrived at a clearing that had been used as a campsite a while back. Here, Naruto was able to pick up on a few distinct scents, including one who belonged to a woman who used a distinctive perfume. Naruto then gathered his genin and led them along the trail to where the scent's led. Two days later, they came upon the bodies of the members of the expedition.

Kaori, whom Naruto presumptuously identified as a fan-girl, refused to touched the bodies. Naruto and the Aburame were the only ones to sort through their belongings to pick up their mineral samples and journals. Naruto, who had already become adept at recognizing different samples immediately began to see problems with what he was seeing. First of all, it was the wrong location for bandits, as they were no where near a major or even minor trail. Second, the mineral samples they were carrying were all useless rocks that were of no mining interest. When mineral samples were taken, the expeditions knew that they would be carrying them for the next few months, so they didn't take anything unless they were hopeful it would contain ores that could be commercially mined. Finally, when Naruto read the last few pages of the journal, the information within didn't seem to match the local terrain.

Naruto relayed his suspicions to his team. They were dubious of his conclusions, but still seemed willing to follow his orders when he decided to track the bandit group to find out why they attacked the expedition. They tracked the group for another two days before coming across a large bandit group operating near one of the major road. Naruto had come across many bandits, but he had never engaged a group this big. He could tell that his team was excited, but he was nervous. He couldn't fathom why a group this big had wandered all the way into the wilderness in order to pursue one little expedition group.

-6-

Isamu Ito walked into his team's usual training ground, glad to see his team had made it back safely from their mission. He would brief them on their mission, verify with the young chunin and decide actions to take then. "So, how did your search and rescue C-rank go?"

"Great." Taro replied.

"Fine." Kaori said.

"..." Eiji.

"Tell me how the mission went." Isamu said.

The three looked at one another before Kaori started. "Well, it started out like a lot of the other missions. We went to where the missing people were last seen, found their campsite, and the chunin followed their scents to their bodies. I thought that would be it, put he said there was something wrong with the scene."

"Wrong with the scene?" Isamu asked, confused by what he thought would be a simple mission.

Eiji took over. "The location of the bodies wasn't near any major or minor roads, yet it appeared that bandit's killed them. The last entries in the journal didn't match the terrain, and according to the chunin, the mineral samples were the wrong type that they should be carrying." As expected of an Aburame, this had been said in monotone and was precise and to the point.

Taro decided to take over from here. "The chunin followed the scents of the bandits and a couple days later we found a huge group of bandits, over a hundred!"

"Over a hundred! Tell me you didn't try to assault that group!?" Isamu thought worriedly.

"I thought we were going to, but the chunin wouldn't let us." Taro said disappointed.

The jonin took a sigh of relief.

"Instead, he used genjutsu to scout out the camp and discovered that the scents didn't actually belong to any of the bandits." Eiji said in a monotone voice.

"Who did the scent's end up belonging to?" the jonin couldn't take it anymore and wanted to skip ahead.

Kaori jumped in and continued. "Turns out they were mercenaries. They were hired by a river country mining company to make it seem like there was nothing of value in the area. We were able to catch up with them a day later. They were trying to throw any pursuers off balance by paying that bandit group to set up camp in their old campsite."

"How did you find that out?" the jonin asked his team.

"We caught up with the mercenaries a day later. There were only a few of them and after we killed half of them, the chunin did some sort of prisoners dilemma on the remaining two in order to find out who hired them. Then we returned home." Taro concluded.

Isamu decided to give them the rest of the day off and have a conversation with the chunin sooner rather than later.

-6-

Naruto had met with the jonin commander and was expecting a meeting with the team jonin any day now. This was an unusual mission for him and it was not often that he broke from routine. He had been assured by Shikaku-sama that he had done everything correctly and had been congratulated both in his insight into the ruse and his restraint when it came to the large bandit group. Konoha would be alerting the mining company to the ruse and using it to secure future contracts for Konoha ninja.

"Sakumo-san?" Naruto looked up to see the jonin of the genin team approaching him.

Naruto waved his hand lazily to show him where he was, even though the jonin had already spotted him. As the jonin made the last few steps, Naruto decided to start. "Sorry, you were probably hoping for a quiet mission to send your team on. All I can say is that was an anomaly from my usual missions."

The jonin shook his head. "I should be thanking you. When I heard the size of that bandit group, I was scared for a minute that you engaged them, but I'm glad you didn't."

Naruto shook his head. "Even if they were the guilty party, I wouldn't engage them with a genin team I wasn't familiar with."

The jonin nodded. "Well, thanks anyway. Anything I should know about their performance?"

"They were pretty good, the Aburame was pretty professional, the others didn't want to search the dead bodies. But they were able to obey the chain of command, which is the biggest problem I usually run into. Give them my thanks for knowing when to obey orders and walk away from a fight."

"Will do." The jonin responded.

-6-

Naruto was once again hanging out at the Inuzuka compound. Being here served two separate purposes. First, it let him hang out with his one true friend, Hana. He was able to play with her dogs and get them out of her hair for a while or just talk with someone who had been where he was. Second purpose, or rather his ulterior purpose, was to scout anyone that might be open to taking over his position for him. He had been in charge of search and rescue missions for a year and a half now and was getting sick of it. If there was anyone capable of doing this kind of work with little training, it was an Inuzuka, so he was keeping his eyes and ears open for anyone that may want it.

He was currently talking with Hana and her mother Tsume on what he might want to do when he was relieved of search and rescue. He knew that while he wouldn't mind learning more about the human body for some of his long term projects, he wouldn't be interested in becoming a fully trained medic-nin.

Aside from this, they had discussed other avenues he could take now that he had chunin rank and eventual freedom from his current duty. They had discussed village security, intelligence, teaching, and many others. They had even discussed how one might let ANBU know that he would be open to the possibility of joining them, as their organization was usually by invite only. But none of those fields really felt like the right decision for now.

"What sort of missions do you want to end up doing?" Hana asked.

"I'm not sure, I really didn't do that much of a variety before you roped me into this search and rescue stuff." Naruto said back, teasing her by making it seem like she trapped him into this a bit.

"Maybe you should try for one of the boiler teams?" Tsume eventually suggested.

Both Hana and Naruto looked at her wondering what she was talking about.

After seeing their faces, Tsume decided to continue. "A Boiler team, or B-Team, as they are both nicknamed, are teams that stay together for years at a time and take B-rank missions one after another. They are usually made up of chunin and tokubetsu jonin teams of four. They are nicknamed boiler because it both starts with B and because they take lots of different missions, like you would describe someone who works hard in a boiler room."

Naruto considered what she had said and decided to look into it. It sounded promising anyway.

-6-

After researching what Tsume had said, Naruto felt that a boiler team may be a promising choice. They seemed to be made up primarily of chunin in their mid to late teens and jonin in their early twenties. They were actually the ones who probably earned Konoha a large bulk of their money. Most of the money given on D-ranks went straight to the genin and Konoha only took a small portion of C-rank pay, as that is what most career genin made for a living. B and A ranks on the other hand, Konoha took a larger portion of the profit for the services of the village.

They seemed like a group of teams that worked hard and gave a lot of experience, but the potential for burn out was high. Of course, before pursuing this, he had to know what openings were available and he had to get a replacement for search and rescue.

-6-

AN: Short chapter, just a filler really. For Naruto to have a promotion to chunin so early, he has to pay the price of doing a couple years of the same missions. A little progress with Hana thrown in, trusting Naruto with her dogs. Next chapter will be longer and more exciting.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Naruto Age 12

Thanks to the help of Hana and Tsume, he was able to find a successor to continue on with his search and rescue missions. It wasn't pretty, but a chunin Inuzuka who had lost half of his hand in a mission gone wrong last year, had agreed to take his place. Ordinarily, when someone received an injury this bad, their career would be over. However, since search and rescue missions were generally low risk, carried out with genin support, and the Inuzuka had a dog to support him, they were able to get an exemption. The chunin Inuzuka was happy to still be useful when he feared his ninja life would be completely over, and Naruto was able to move on to bigger and brighter things.

Naruto was technically on leave right now, to determine where he wanted to go in his career. He had been looking into the boiler teams and was tentatively looking to accept a posting there. However, there was one thing he was conflicted about doing first, meeting with the Hokage.

Naruto had agreed to come back to Konoha to be a ninja by the time he was of age. The sandaime didn't know he had already fulfilled this promise, but Naruto still felt he should make direct contact. He had been sending letters every few months when he was on a mission near a major city, but knew the Hokage had no way of writing him back.

Eventually, Naruto decided to send him a letter requesting a meeting with him in his old apartment. Naruto would forgo the face mask and dye his hair back blonde, but try to limit the information that he gave the Hokage.

-7-

The sandaime pondered his situation once more as he arrived at Naruto's apartment building. For the last few years he had been worried sick over whether or not Naruto was even alive or dead. Five times, he had come close to ordering a team be sent to look for him and he didn't know how many times he pondered letting Jiraiya try to find him. He had only received some cryptic letters from him every few months to let him know he was doing okay. He would be very relieved to see him in person.

As he arrived at Naruto's door, he paused for a moment to collect himself before letting himself in. As expected, there was Naruto.

"Naruto, my boy, it is good to see you after so long." It truly was. Naruto had grown quite a bit and looked both strong and confident. His hair was a bit shorter and his clothes were more acceptable for everyday wear.

"Hey," was all he said as he went over to give the sandaime a hug.

"So," the sandaime started, as he had a seat in one of the chairs. "What have you been up to the past few years? Where have you traveled?"

"Well, that's a bit of a story. One I think you're going to be pretty surprised with." Naruto said with a smirk. "I think you should know however, that it was a tough call on whether or not I should meet with you."

The sandaime frowned. He knew that there was the potential that Naruto would not want to return to Konoha after experiencing life without the pressures of being a jinchuuriki, but he didn't think that Naruto would betray a promise.

Naruto decided to interrupt any response he might have had however. "I will begin by saying that I will tell you a little of what I've been up to and I think that you will be pretty proud of me. If you give me an order to answer your questions as the Hokage, I won't refuse or lie. But if you ask me a question as a friend, I may refuse to answer, but I also won't lie."

The sandaime considered this. Why would Naruto be saying something like that. He supposed that if he wanted to, he could order Naruto to tell him everything, but it would be the Hokage ordering it, not his friend. For now, he would let Naruto tell him what he could and reserve that power for later. "Go ahead, Naruto."

"Well, I suppose that the first thing I did was head up to the Fire Country Capital to legally change my name." Naruto began. "I then traveled a bit, but within three months, I was back in Konoha."

"Back in Konoha!" It was not often that the sandaime was surprised. 'The whole reason for Naruto leaving was to get away from Konoha, why did he come back?' the sandaime thought.

"Yep," Naruto said with that infernal smirk on his face. "I reapplied for the ninja academy under my assumed name."

'Reapplied for the academy? And they didn't recognize him?' The sandaime wondered how his academy teachers could be so stupid as to not recognize Uzumaki Naruto, whom they had spent almost a year complaining about.

The sandaime could see Naruto was still smirking, but was still trying to process this information.

"This is the point where I don't know what information to give you." Naruto eventually continued. "I like the life I'm leading right now, I know that if I continue along this course I will eventually reach a point where if I take off my mask, there would eventually be a lot of people that would respect me for what I have accomplished and what I could accomplish in the future. I don't want to go back to being Uzumaki Naruto quite yet."

"Wait, accomplished? Are you in the academy right now or are you a ninja right now?" The sandaime could see that Naruto was conflicted about whether or not he should answer the question.

"I... am a ninja. Which is another reason I can't refuse a direct order from you." Naruto eventually said.

The sandaime considered this. Naruto was already a ninja, going on missions and learning from jonin about how to be a ninja. He was very concerned that he didn't know about this, but in the end, decided that it was better for Naruto to be learning how to be a random ninja of Konoha than to be wandering around Fire Country by himself.

"Now we reach the impasse." Naruto said. "I can't give you any other information, or I would essentially be telling you who I am, but I do want you to know that I'm safe and keeping my promise to become a Konoha ninja."

"Why don't you want me to know who you are?" The sandaime asked, already suspecting the reasons, but wanted to hear them from Naruto's mouth.

Naruto thought about it for a moment. "I guess the biggest reason is that I want to see what I can accomplish when I'm completely on my own. The second you look up my file, your assistants, your guards, anyone watching your activities is going to wonder why you're looking me up for no reason. If you try to keep an eye on me, the same thing will happen. Like the quote says "The act of observation changes behavior the observed." I still want to see what I can do on my own."

The sandaime considered what Naruto had said. He greatly wanted to know who he was and what he had done while within the ninja ranks, but Naruto was right. Anything the sandaime did, short of asking Naruto, would alert others, especially Danzo. If there was one person the sandaime wanted Naruto to avoid, it was Danzo. "Alright, I won't order you to answer me. But I do have separate orders for you. First, you will write your new name and ninja ID number on a piece of paper and put it under the dresser. If I don't hear from you for a while, I will look there to determine how to reach you." The sandaime waited for Naruto to nod in confirmation.

"Second, you will continue to send me letters confirming that you are doing okay. Lastly, and most importantly, you will not associate with Shimura Danzo. If fact, I order you to answer honestly, have you met or are you associated with Shimura Danzo?"

Naruto shook his head and said "no."

"Avoid him Naruto, he is dangerous." The sandaime warned. "With that, I will say that you were right. I am proud of you."

-7-

A few weeks later.

Naruto had secured an interview one of the boiler teams. In fact, from the research he had done, this would be the team he was best suited for. This team, officially named b-rank team three, or code named 'brutal', was a group specializing in taijutsu and close range combat. If the other members of the team were close range specialists, then Naruto could fill the holes in what they were missing and they could teach him to become a better taijutsu user. If there was a skill that Naruto had that he wasn't confident with, it was taijutsu. Most of his experience with taijutsu was from sparring with Hana when he had the chance.

Naruto was walking into the training ground where team brutal was currently sparring. As Naruto approached, he could tell that this was a team that took taijutsu seriously. If he succeeded in getting onto this team, his first few months would likely be very hard on his body.

The team noticed his approach and stopped training. The oldest, who appeared to be there leader said, "do you have a message for us?"

Naruto blinked for a minute, but got right to the heart of the matter. "Actually, I'm here for an interview with your team. My name is Sakumo Hayashi."

The team looked at him oddly. Naruto suspected they were either doubting him or having second thoughts about agreeing to interview him. No doubt both stemmed from his age.

"Well, we didn't expect you to be so..." the leader began.

"Young?" Naruto said in a slightly patronizing way.

"What he means," a chunin to his left interrupted, "is we don't take rookie chunin. This is a team that takes higher rank missions and we need someone more experienced."

"I've been a chunin for two years." Naruto replied, making sure they understood that he wasn't a rookie.

The team looked at one another, unsure of what to say to that.

Naruto decided to give them a little relief. "Why don't you just give me an interview like you would any other, test me like you would any other, and decide like you would any other. If you promise to give me the same chance you would anyone else with my experience, I promise I won't make a fuss about it later if you refuse."

The leader nodded his head at such a fair offer. Truthfully, he was concerned that someone so young must be politically connected and therefore would create trouble if they didn't want him. "Alright, sounds fair. My name is Raido Namiashi, tokubetsu jonin, and the leader of this squad. To my left is Izumo Kamizuki, chunin, and to my right is Kotetsu Hagane, also chunin."

Naruto nodded at each of them, memorizing their names. Raido seemed to be a confident jonin dressed in standard garb. He had brown spiky hair and had a scar on the left cheek of his face. Izumo was slightly short for his age, which appeared to be late teens, also had brown hair although it was covered by a bandanna. Kotetsu had spiky black hair, a soul patch on his chin, and a single white strip of cloth horizontally covering his face crossing his nose, for some reason.

"Alright, lets get started then." Raido began. "What have you been doing for the last two years."

"I've been the chunin on-call for search and rescue missions. I've led almost constant genin teams to search for missing expeditions, semi-important people, and sometimes exploration missions." Naruto said as professionally as possible.

"Is that how you were promoted?" Izumo asked.

"Yes, Hana Inuzuka, my predecessor recommended me after recognizing me as a potential successor. I asked that she train me to be good enough in tracking and help get my others skills up to chunin level before the promotion was finalized though." Naruto defended.

"Do you think you were ready for the promotion?" Kotetsu asked.

Naruto looked at him, wondering if that was a slight against his age, but decided to answer as honestly as he could. "As ready as I could be for this particular promotion. At that point, I knew what missions I would be taking as I had already been on several of them as a genin."

"What makes you think that you are ready to be on a team like this? I assume you know what sort of missions we take." Raido took back over the questioning.

"I have done my research, or at least as much research I could without experiencing it for myself. To answer your question, I don't know if I'm fully ready, but I am looking for a change in my current career path. For the last two years I've mostly been doing the same thing, leading genin on C-rank missions and training in my off time. I'm interviewing with you because I feel this would be the best boiler team for me to join." Naruto concluded, hoping to steer the conversation toward a better direction.

"Why our team?" Kotetsu blurted out.

Naruto internally smiled. "I've heard that your team specializes in close range combat."

"And that's your strongest skill?" Izumo asked doubtfully, analyzing his body.

"Because taijutsu is my biggest weakness at the moment." Naruto revealed, to the shock of the team.

"Then why would you..." Kotetsu began.

"Because I'm hoping that for however long I'm here, you guys can help me build up my skills." Naruto interrupted. "At the moment, I specialize in genjutsu and ninjutsu when it come to combat, while my taijutsu is probably only barely chunin level. I figured that I could cover some of the holes you might have in your team when it comes to ninjutsu and genjutsu while you taught me better taijutsu over time."

"What elements can you use?" Raido asked.

"Fire is my primary and earth is my secondary element. However, I have mastered many of the basic elemental control exercises for all five elements, so I am comfortable using all of them, to a degree." Naruto said proudly.

"All of them!" Izumo exclaimed. He himself had only started to learn water elemental control exercises, and that was his primary element. "What is your ninjutsu arsenal like?"

Naruto considered this question. "I know almost a hundred jutsus, pretty much everything they had listed in the chunin library."

Raido smirked. "You use the chunin library often then?"

"Of course." Naruto said proudly. "It's probably the greatest thing that happened to me since I became a chunin. If it weren't for that, I would have gotten so fed up with being a chunin that I would have requested being demoted"

"What's wrong with being a chunin?" Kotetsu asked, confused by this side of him.

"Well, you guys have probably noticed that I'm younger than a lot of the other chunin." Naruto remarked as the others displayed a 'no duh' expression. "The genin that I was supposed to be supervising all the time just couldn't seem to accept it. Every mission, I worked with older genin who couldn't believe they were stuck in the reserve corp being commanded by someone younger than them. Every single mission it was "you're just a kid" or "why should I listen to you." It's enough to make a guy go crazy, I'll tell you."

"What did you do in situations like that?" Raido asked, curious about what sort of leader he was.

"Usually those comments started at the beginning of the mission and in search and rescue you have to race to the last known site. So I made them prove they were better than me by trying to race non-stop to the site. When they started to drop like flies after only an hour and I was still pretty fresh, I made them understand that I was stronger than them and wasn't afraid to prove it. A couple of times I had to threaten insubordination, but I usually tried to keep my temper. That's one of the things I'm looking forward to, if you accept me."

"What's that?" Raido asked.

"Being a subordinate again." Naruto replied. "I realized that I had a much better time as a subordinate to an older commander than being a younger commander to an older subordinate."

"Well, how about a demonstration of skills then?" Raido said, determining that the spoken interview had gone on long enough. "Izumo, why don't you spar with Sakumo?"

"Rules?" Naruto asked.

Raido thought about it. "For now, just taijutsu. Let's see your base level skill."

After sparring with Izumo for a few minutes, the others could see that Naruto's taijutsu skill was pretty basic. In fact, he was still using the academy style as his primary style.

"Enough. Sakumo, you may use any other skill to impress us, but nothing too destructive. Izumo, focus primarily on taijutsu." Raido said. He was disappointed with Sakumo's taijutsu, but at least he was honest about it.

Naruto, who knew he had just embarrassed himself with such a poor showing, decided to see if he could fool them using his genjutsu enhanced fighting style. Naruto had come a long way since the days when he had developed this fighting against Hana. Let's see how well it worked on Izumo.

-7-

Izumo could feel the fight starting to change. Sakumo had been right about his taijutsu needing serious work before, but now he couldn't figure out what had changed. It was like he suddenly changed from a novice to a master. Izumo felt like he was fighting against Gai, the strikes were coming out of nowhere.

He was starting to have to use more and more power and speed just to keep up. Every time he struck, Sakumo seemed to move out of the way at the last second. What was going on?

-7-

From a distance Raido and Kotetsu were asking themselves the same question. Sakumo had suddenly transformed into an expert fighter. They could still tell from his stance that he was using the same style, but for some reason he was wasn't taking hits and he seemed to deliver them with pin-point accuracy.

After a recent miss from a much faster and harder kick from Izumo, Raido saw something out of the corner of his eye. Sakumo had literally blurred there for a second. It wasn't speed, it was something else. He could tell at this point that Izumo was fighting with all he had, so there must be some sort of trick that Sakumo was employing. There, he saw it again. Could it be that simple?

-7-

"Stop." Raido said from the sidelines.

Naruto and Izumo both ceased their attacks against the other. Izumo appeared to be slightly out of breath.

"How... how did you do that?" Izumo said confused. He looked to his friend, but Kotetsu appeared to be just as confused as him.

Raido looked suspiciously at Naruto before speaking. "Sakumo, is it possible that what you were doing... was it genjutsu?"

Naruto seemed to smirk at the thought before nodding his head.

"But how?" Izumo and Kotetsu both said.

Izumo continued, "I didn't see anything that could be a genjutsu. I would have known if I was placed under one."

Raido motioned for Naruto to speak.

Naruto smirked a little more before explaining. "It wasn't a single genjutsu. It was multiple short and slight genjutsus. Nothing to make it seem out of ordinary, but enough to make you misjudge the distance between us, enough to make you see and opening, or a punch that doesn't exist."

"But you didn't use any hand seals!" Izumo continued, unable to believe he had been food in such a way.

"Genjutsu is a field that relies heavily on imagination and chakra control. There aren't that many 'jutsus' as much as there are strategies. For me, over time I have learned to do simple genjutsus though pure chakra manipulation. It's difficult to keep up and use for extended fights like this, so I mostly use it to create openings for a kunai strike or something similar." Naruto explained.

Izumo paled at this, he a left a lot of openings. It would have been very easy for Naruto to have simply stabbed him with a kunai.

"Well," Raido began, still a little shocked himself. "We will discuss this and contact you with our decision."

"Thank you for the opportunity." Naruto bowed.

-7-

The very next day, Naruto received a formal invitation to join the boiler team he had interviewed with. Apparently, he had made a good impression and their discussion hadn't taken long. He thought over his options on what he could be doing now before he accepted, but in the end, couldn't think of anything else. So, with no further thinking, he decided to accept their invitation.

Naruto sent a clone over to the training spot he had interviewed in, to see if they were there. As expected, the team was training there, just as they had been yesterday. Naruto quickly dressed himself in some of his older mission clothes, which he had now designated training clothes, due to the state they were currently in. He was out the door and ready to surprise them for a day of training.

When he showed up, the three were pretty surprised to see him. Naruto quickly explained that he was accepting the position they offered and would have the paperwork completed by tonight. He then asked it they wanted him to train with them now.

The team seemed amused by his impetuousness and eagerness, but decided to include him anyway. They made a slight adjustment in their training and decided to review their team formations, introducing Naruto to the common travel, battle, investigatory, and formal formations that the team usually took and what key words or hand signals were signs to take a formation.

This wasn't quite the training Naruto was expecting, but knew that it would be somewhat important for the future. Teamwork was an important part of Konoha's fighting strategies and it was something that Naruto had not experienced, as he had never really had a permanent team. It was a bit boring, but he kept that to himself and did his best to learn the formations and their signals. After all, he remembered how much whiny subordinates grated his nerves, and he never wanted to be that kind of subordinate.

-7-

Due to the fact that the team had taken on a new member, they were offered a brief reprieve from missions. Once Naruto had turned in his paperwork the next day and had gotten official orders for the unification of the team, Raido began his training in earnest. The break from missions would not last forever, in fact, they were given only two weeks for training him before it would be back to constant missions.

Raido had hashed out Naruto's official training schedule in order to acclimate him to the new team as fast as possible. Within a couple of weeks, they could literally have each others lives in their hands, to their was no time to waste. As this was an existing team, they had a number of internal regulations that only applied to their team. Things like where to store weapons and equipment, so that team members could take them in emergencies, were expected for Naruto to learn so that the unit could be more effective in any situation.

There was also the type of training that he was more used to, meaning physical and taijutsu type training. Naruto had always had a lot of energy and had done his best to keep himself in peak physical condition, so this was not much of an issue, despite the annoyance it gave Kotetsu and Izumo, who despite being older and more experienced, did not have unlimited energy. As for the taijutsu, Naruto knew that it was one of his weakest skills, so he made sure to listen and pay attention to whatever they were willing to impart.

As busy as he was, Naruto was enjoying himself. For the first time in almost two years, he felt like he had something to look forward to. He was learning a lot everyday and when missions started, he would be doing higher ranked missions with an experienced team.

-7-

As expected, after two weeks, orders came down from up high telling them that they had enough training and were needed for missions again. Raido came into the training ground holding a B-rank scroll with instructions within, ready to brief his team on the assignment.

"Well, I had hoped to keep you in the background for the first few missions, but it seems someone took notice of your tracking skills and assigned us this mission, which has been given a priority." Raido began, looking to Naruto as he spoke. "Fire Capital is our biggest employer, so when a mission request comes in from them, we try to complete it as professionally and quickly as possible. It seems that recently, a new brand of opium has hit the streets of the capital. It's stronger and more dangerous than any of the other types currently on the street and has already taken the lives of a dozen people. The government would like us to track down the source and put them out of business."

Naruto grinned, this is the kind of mission he had been hoping for. Occasionally he would be able to save some survivors on search and rescue missions, but for the most part it was just finding bodies and piecing together what happened. This mission on the other hand, this was an opportunity to do some real good that would help his country, shutting down a dangerous drug distribution network at it's source!

"Sakumo," Raido interrupted his thinking. "Since this is your first mission, I would like permission to go home with you and make sure you pack appropriately for the mission."

Naruto quickly nodded, knowing that this was more of an order than a question.

"Alright then, meet at the front gate in forty-five minutes, move out!" Raido ordered.

Naruto quickly made his way home, motioning his commander to follow. As they arrived at his apartment Raido looked with slight disdain at the neighborhood his new team member was living in. It wasn't the first time he had seen a ninja living out here, but it had been a while. Naruto opened his apartment door and began to gather everything he thought he would need onto the kitchen table for inspection. A few minutes later, he turned to his commander and asked "how do these look?"

Raido examined the equipment, it was sorted into two piles, what would be kept on his person and what would be sealing into a scroll. It looked like his new teammate had done pretty well in guessing what would be needed for this mission. "Just one more thing," Raido concluded after seeing his choices. "Include some civilian clothing as well. This mission might require us to go undercover in the capital to find where the drugs are coming from and it would be best if we aren't dressed like ninja for that part."

Naruto nodded at his comment before going into his bedroom and grabbing some of the few civilian style clothing he had. He then added it to what would be sealed into the scroll and started packing the items.

At this point Raido excused himself to pack himself.

Naruto finished packing and decided to pay his monthly rent before he left, on the likelihood that he would not be back before the month had ended. Not that it would be a problem even if he didn't, after all, Konoha had very strict and harshly penalized laws about evicting ninja who were away on missions. Regardless, Naruto found the landlord and payed his rent while he was heading out. He then made his way to the front gate for his first B-rank mission on his new team.

-7-

The team made very good time to the Fire Country Capital. For the first time in a long time, Naruto felt like he was where he was meant to be. At this rate, they would make it to the Fire country capital by late night. Whether or not they would camp out before hand was up to Raido, but not having to stop every hour to listen to genin complain while out of breath was a dream come true.

In the end, Raido did decide to camp out about half an hour away from the capital, to avoid having to pay for a room at an inn. They set up camp and due to the relative safety of the general area, decided to forgo the guard, but set up a series of traps so they could sleep in peace. Tomorrow, they would check in with the local authorities and begin tracking the opium to it's source.

As morning approached Naruto woke at the same time as his commander. Raido was boiling water for tea at the same time Naruto was taking a quick dip in a nearby river. After a few minutes of sitting and drinking their tea, Raido decided to wake the other two up and get started with their day. The two chunin got up with minimal grumbling and began packing their tent and sleeping bags. Naruto and Raido deconstructed the traps and sanitized their campsite for any trace of their presence.

Within minutes, they were back on their way to the capital, taking a slightly leisurely pace, due to the earliness of the morning. In just under an hour, they arrived at the outskirts of the city and Raido expertly led them to the police headquarters, where they would receive any updated information about their mission.

Upon their arrival, they were quickly escorted to the police captain in charge of the case. The older and slightly overweight man looked at them with a bit of suspicion before opening a drawer and pulling out a case file. He handed it over to Raido and began. "This is what we know so far. A new brand of opium has hit the streets and we've already got twenty deaths. Normally, cities this large have inherent problems with drugs and the police deal with it accordingly, but this new brand is too dangerous for us to take our time investigating. We need this off the streets fast and we need it to disappear."

Raido looked through the file, looking for common places of distribution or sections of town that were preferred by the victims. "Have you caught any of the dealers of this new brand?"

"No," the captain said with dejection. "We originally had a task force set up, but it was yielding no results, so we sent for you guys."

"Are there any ways of distinguishing this new brand from any of the other brands on the street?" Raido continued with his questions.

"Aside from the fact that it costs almost double what the other dealers are charging, it seems to be marked with red sticker. There is a picture of it in the file." The captain directed Raido to the page with the picture of the opium wrapper, where there was a red sticker visible on the wrapper.

"Is the task force still in operation?" Raido asked the captain, curious if he could utilize any additional resources.

"When the brass decided to call you guys, they reassigned most of the men to other cases. They left me to brief you and two of our guys to help you with your investigation." The captain said, more than a little miffed at his failure when it came to the task force.

"Do you have an office or squad room we could use during our investigation?" Raido eventually asked.

"I have the two men I just mentioned waiting there now. Let me escort you there." The police captain led them to a second floor conference room, where two men were sitting. "Men, this is Raido Namiashi from Konoha. He will be leading the investigation from here on out. You will provide him with whatever he needs and obey him as you would me for the duration of the investigation. Namiashi-san, we have barracks downstairs prepared for you and your team during your stay here, the men can show you where. Until then, if there is anything else you need, you know where my office is." The captain left.

Raido looked at the two men sitting in the small room. One of them looked eager to help with the investigation, the other looked like he would rather be anywhere else. "Alright, we'll go over the evidence and information you have collected so far, then we will hit the streets and try to find the ones who are spreading this stuff. First, introduce yourselves and what your roles were before we came into the fold." Raido motioned to the cops already sitting.

The helpful looking one stood and introduced himself as Detective Watanabe and he had been in charge of compiling all the information collected during the investigation. The other one introduced himself as Detective Fujimoto, who had a number of contacts on the street and a good understanding of the drug trafficking in the capital.

Raido ordered Det. Watanabe to bring his team up to speed while he continued reading the file. No arrests made so far, twenty deaths already, and barely any leads outside of the sticker on the wrapper. He could see how the brass was losing patience with the local authorities and decided to bring them in.

When Det. Watanabe had finished bringing his team up to speed, Raido took over the briefing. He opened up a map of the whole of the city and placed it on the table. "Alright, first priority is finding the dealers who are spreading this stuff. Det. Fujimoto, where do you think we are most likely to find the dealers?"

Det. Fujimoto, who until now had tuned out what was being said, seemed to internally debate whether or not to cooperate with the ninja before deciding to just do as he was ordered. "We were mostly focused on the bad sections of town, where drug activities are common, but only found regular dealers. I however, suspect that based on the previous deaths, these dealers are going to be more common in the more active areas. Nightclubs, youth hangout spots, and universities. Places with young adults and teens with more than a bit of money to be spent."

Raido nodded, "that sounds like a good plan for now." He looked at his team before making his decision. "Kotetsu and Izumo, disguise yourselves as potential buyers and check out the universities. Look for shady people who might be selling and check them for opium and more of these red stickers. Sakumo and I will head to whatever hangout spots the detective has in mind and check there. If you don't find anything by mid-afternoon, get some rest. You're going to a nightclub tonight." Raido said with a smirk.

Kotetsu and Izumo nodded before pulling out some civilian clothing to change into. Within a few minutes, they were out the door.

Naruto pulled his civilian clothing out as well, starting to change into it.

Det. Watanabe looked at him with a worried expression, before facing Raido and voicing his concerns. "Why did you bring a boy his age with you? Surely you don't expect him to go along with this mission."

Raido smirked at the detective. "Rest assured, while he may look like a kid, Sakumo has served Konoha for years already. Besides, I believe he might be even more useful for finding a dealer than you might think. Most dealers are suspicious by nature, but even the most suspicious dealer probably won't worry about a kid who just appears to be buying drugs for his brother."

"Buying for his brother?" Det. Fujimoto asked.

"Yeah, Sakumo will approach any dealers we find, looking for one that sells the kind with the red sticker for his brother, whom his parents have grounded."

Both of the detectives considered this. Dealers were suspicious of new buyers, but police never used kids to make deals, especially kids as young as this.

-7-

So, that is how Naruto spent his last few hours. Going up to people who were suspected of being dealers and trying to locate one who sold the kind with the red sticker. While he had found a few dealers of opium (and a lot more people who weren't), he hadn't found any that sold the new brand. Raido and Det. Fujimoto followed him as he made is approaches and every once and a while critiqued his approach method, but mostly hung back and in Det. Fujimoto's case, marked dealers for future observation or arrest.

By the end of the day, he had not had any luck. No one seemed to know where the new stuff was coming from. They headed back to the station in order to let Kotetsu and Izumo know they were on for the evening.

When the arrived at the station, Izumo was in the briefing room reading the file of the case.

"Any luck?" Raido asked

Izumo shook his head. "We only found one person selling opium, everyone else was selling stimulants in order to stay awake and study. You?"

"Nothing with the red sticker." Raido replied back. "Looks like you two are on for this evening."

"Kotetsu figured. He's out looking for some new clothing so we can blend in better"

Raido smiled, "Are you sure he's not looking for new clothing he might get lucky in?"

Izumo smirked. "Hey, whatever helps us blend in."

Raido turned to Det. Fujimoto. "What clubs would you recommend we start with?"

Det. Fujimoto considered for a moment before pointing to two places on the map. "The Flamethrower and the Aces are probably your best bets. They both have a reputation for being wild hangouts for teens and young adults."

Raido nodded. "Alright, why don't you go home and get some rest, tomorrow we'll brief you on our findings and go from there."

Det. Fujimoto looked like he might want to come along for the clubs, but wasn't one to turn down free time. "Fine, see you tomorrow morning."

"Sakumo, scout out these two clubs and report back to me in two hours on what the best over watch positions are. Izumo and Kotetsu will enter the clubs together with me and you will stay back to watch for any suspicious people entering or leaving. Once every half an hour, one of us will meet with you to check out any of the people you flag."

Naruto listened to his commander's orders. He re-checked the map to confirm the locations of the clubs before heading out to scout ahead.

-7-

Naruto watched as Kotetsu and Izumo entered into 'The Flamethrower.' This would be the second club of the night. The first one had gone according to plan and they had spent two hours looking for any dealers to no avail. Naruto had watched from the rooftops across the street for anyone that looked suspicious. As this was his first time even seeing a nightclub, he wasn't quite sure what suspicious meant and by the second check in from the others, had told them that. Izumo, the person checking in with him at the time, assured him that it would come with experience.

At the second location, Naruto was once more watching the people in line waiting for the club when he noticed people leaving the club. What was unusual was that they had just entered the club only a few minutes ago and had skipped the line. Naruto made a shadow clone to follow them as they seemed to be going into an alley behind the club. The shadow clone observed the small group walk up to a man he hadn't noticed before. He watched them exchange money for what looked like opium. Quickly he dispelled himself to alert his creator.

As Naruto absorbed the memories from his recently created clone, he pondered whether this dealer would have the products that they sought. He suspected it would be at least ten more minutes before one of the others checked on him again and decided to make another clone to keep an eye on the dealer, just in case.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, Kotetsu walked out of the club to check on him. Naruto quickly told him about the dealer he had seen and Kotetsu admitted that was probably the best lead they had at the moment. He reentered the club to fetch the rest of the team to alert them of Sakumo's find.

Ten minutes later, the team was assembled on the rooftop, replacing the clone that had been watching the dealer. They backed away from the edge of the roof to have a conversation without him hearing.

"Any indication he might be different from the ones we saw earlier today?" Raido asked Naruto.

"Some of the people that were allowed to skip the line waiting for the club were the ones I saw buying from him. That might indicated that his stuff is better than what you might find among the other dealers." Naruto explained his thinking.

Raido considered what he had said before agreeing with his thinking. "Alright, Izumo, Kotetsu, you play the role of the buyers looker for better opium. Sakumo and myself will remain here to watch him. If he has any of the red sticker opium, don't alert him, just buy some and get back here. If it ends up being him, we will keep an eye on him to see where he goes."

Izumo and Kotetsu nodded before heading back to the club to make it look like they are coming from that direction. Naruto observed them doing a buy from the dealer. In the end, they returned a few minutes later, confirming that it was indeed the red sticker brand.

Raido nodded at their results. "Alright, Izumo and Kotetsu, return to the station and get some sleep. In five hours, I'll send Sakumo for you to replace us."

Izumo and Kotetsu nodded, before returning to the station. Naruto settled in to the rooftop, he figured he would be here for a while.

-7-

Naruto and Raido continued observation of their suspect. For the next four hours, he remained in his position waiting for buyers to come to him. At around 2 am, when he hadn't had any customers for a while, he apparently decided to pack it in. Raido and Naruto tracked him from a distance, sticking to rooftops as he traveled. Eventually, he made his way to an apartment building in a nearby section of town. They both moved in closer, but carefully to see which apartment he would enter. Fortunately, he was on the first floor, so they did not lose track of which apartment he entered. Unfortunately, his windows were closed and covered, so they could not keep watch inside.

An hour later, Raido sent Naruto to collect his teammates from the station, so they could take over watch. Naruto collected the two, who were fast asleep at the time and brought them to the apartment building. Raido ordered the two of them to keep watch on the building, but allowed for them to sleep in shifts as long as one of them was watching. He then took Naruto and led him back to the station so they could get some sleep.

The next morning, Naruto and Raido awoke early in order to brief the two detectives and take over watch of their suspect. The night had been a little short for Naruto's taste, but was used to being awoken for the purpose of taking missions. Naruto stretched out his muscles as he walked back to the briefing room to see if the local detectives were here yet.

Det. Fujimoto was already here ready to continue where as the other detective was not here yet. Naruto had come to suspect that while Det. Watanabe had a better attitude toward the ninja guest's, he was strictly a nine to five worker. On the other hand Det. Fujimoto was a man who got invested in whatever case he was pursuing and did whatever was needed for the case to be completed.

"How did your investigation go last night?" Det. Fujimoto asked, as soon as he saw the two ninja.

Naruto looked to Raido, who was making himself a cup of tea. Raido nodded to Naruto.

Naruto understood and began to brief Det. Fujimoto. "We were able to spot a dealer at 'The Flamethrower' club last night. Izumo and Kotetsu bought some opium from him and were able to confirm that it appears to be the same as we were looking for. Raido and I watched him for a while as he continued to deal drugs, then followed him to his apartment. The other two are watching him now."

"You didn't arrest him?" Det. Fujimoto asked.

Raido at this point cut into the conversation. "No, for now we will keep watch and see if he can lead us to his source. We can arrest him later if we get nothing from him in the next couple days."

Det. Fujimoto nodded, understanding what they were trying to accomplish.

Raido turned to Naruto. "Sakumo, why don't you go and relieve Izumo and Kotetsu. The suspect will probably still be sleeping right now, but if he gets up anytime soon, follow him from afar and don't get too close. Make a note on everywhere he goes and everyone he talks to."

Naruto nodded and headed out the door. He made his way back to the apartment building by roof hopping, but also trying to remain unseen by the civilian population. He quickly arrived at the apartment building and spotted his teammates on the same roof as last night. He made his way over to them as Kotetsu saw him coming.

"Sakumo, here to relieve us?" Kotetsu asked. Izumo turned around from where he was watching the building to nod at Naruto.

"Yep, Raido wants you two back at the briefing room, looks like we're going to be watching him for a few days hoping he leads us to his source. Any activity?" Naruto told the others the gist of the current plan.

"All quiet," Izumo said, getting ready to head back to the police station.

"Keep your head down." Kotetsu said, as he and Izumo left.

Naruto re-familiarized himself with the building before sending a clone to the opposite side of the building for safety. He settled in for a while, suspecting that the suspect had a better nights sleep than he did.

Naruto continued his watch for a couple of hours until he saw the suspect exiting the building. Now that it was day out, he could see the suspect much better. He was about six feet tall and had both short hair and a light beard. Naruto could see a combination of muscle and fat beneath his baggy clothing. He took down notes of his approximate height, weight, hair, and body type. The man looked like he was going somewhere, but Naruto didn't know where. He motioned for his clone to stay behind and wait for his team if they came looking.

For the next hour, Naruto followed the man as he went about his routine. The man went to a cafe where he had a coffee for the first half hour, but left soon after he finished his drink. After that, he just seemed to walk around town for a while. Naruto hadn't seen him speaking to anyone or going anyplace in particular, so was quite curious about what he was doing.

Around this time, he felt his clone dispel, telling him that Raido had arrived at the apartment building with Det. Fujimoto. It seemed that Raido was quite surprised to find out he could make shadow clones, but had passed along a message to keep following the suspect. It seemed that Det. Fujimoto had obtained a warrant to search the apartment and they were going to try to discover the man's identity and anything else they may find. They would be keeping everything in place, so as not to alert the suspect, but wanted to give the detectives at least something to investigate while the ninja were watching him.

Naruto made another clone to send back to the apartment to oversee what, if anything, they had found and to brief Raido on his current location. After a few more minutes it seemed that the suspect had finally settled into an alleyway across from a park. There was already a teenager waiting for him when he arrived and Naruto witnessed another drug deal, as he had last night. It seemed Naruto had found his day dealing spot. He hoped that if he was this busy, he would run out of product soon and have to restock his baggy jacket. He produced a clone with his current memories and dispelled it, transferring his current memories to the clone that had gone to meet Raido, so that his commander would have his current location.

An hour later, his clone dispelled, signaling him that the search was over and that Kotetsu would be relieving him in one hour. They hadn't discovered any other drugs at his apartment, so the only supply the suspect had was on his person. In fact, they hadn't discovered much of anything at the apartment. It seemed that he only used it for sleeping and storing useless crap. What they hadn't found were any documents on who he was or who his supplier was.

Naruto continued waiting and keeping an eye on the suspect, but the man continued to stay in the alley and deal to the occasional teenager. Naruto sent a few clones after the first few teenagers, but they mostly went home or to hang out with friends after they had scored their drugs. Naruto did note however, that the teenagers all seemed to come from average or above average families when it came to wealth. Or at least that is what he observed from his following the teenagers to their homes.

Naruto sensed a presence approaching him and turned to see Kotetsu hopping over from the adjacent rooftop. Naruto gave him a bit of a wave, checked on the suspect once more, and headed over to meet him.

"Learn anything?" Kotetsu asked.

Naruto shrugged as he responded. "He likes coffee in the morning and then just wandered around for a bit before coming here to deal. He had a customer here waiting for him and has had people come up to him every twenty minutes or so to buy. Almost all of them are teenagers. My clones followed a few of them home or to friends to make sure."

"Yeah, why didn't you tell us you could make shadow clones?" Kotetsu asked.

"Well, this is our first mission together, and I told you I knew quite a few jutsu. Besides, we only met a few days ago." Naruto replied.

"Okay, okay, head back to the station and brief the others on what you found." Kotetsu directed, taking Naruto's former place on the rooftop.

Naruto returned to the police station to tell the remainder of his team and the detectives what he had observed. The detectives weren't happy that he was selling mostly to teenagers, but they were glad to finally have a lead on this case.

-7-

It turned out that as Kotetsu's watch was ending and Izumo's was about to begin, the suspect made a trip to a warehouse on the eastern outskirts of town. He was only in there for a few minutes, but it was a strong indication that the team had found the source for the opium. Izumo was still watching the suspect, but now that they had a more promising lead, they could choose when to bring him in for arrest.

Raido, surprised with Naruto's abilities, had decided to allow him to do the initial investigation into the warehouse. Naruto would be using a shadow clone, under a genjutsu, to infiltrate the warehouse and confirm that this was the location they had been seeking. Naruto's clone would learn the approximate layout, confirm the presence of the drugs, do a head count of the people inside, and take a look at the security before dispelling.

Naruto's clone entered from a loose window in the back. Briefly looking around the room to make sure he was alone, he slipped in behind some boxes and inspected the contents, empty. It seems that they weren't using this particular section of the warehouse. He added chakra to his feet to make sure his footsteps were as silent as possible and proceeded to move around the edge of the warehouse to scout out as much of the area before moving to the entrance. As he saw previously, much of the building was empty and they were only using this warehouse for it's location in a less populated section of town.

Naruto (clone) worked his way to the entrance where he saw three men huddled around a few small boxes that seemed to contain the opium they were selling. For the moment, Naruto merely memorized each man for a description later. Naruto then moved back to his original entry point in order to scout out the other parts of the warehouse that he missed. As expected, they were empty. Seeing all there was to see, Naruto made sure he was as far away as he could be from the men and dispelled himself.

The real Naruto waited outside with Raido and the detectives. He closed his eyes when he felt the influx of memories and spent a few minutes reviewing them before nodding to Raido. "It went unnoticed." He reassured the others that his clone had not been discovered.

"There is only three men and they are near the front entrance. They have a few small boxes of opium, but the rest of the warehouse is unused. If we entered through the same way my clone did, we could take them quietly." Naruto briefed.

Raido nodded. Truthfully, he hadn't expected much, but there was a possibility they were growing the opium in the warehouse and keeping people inside to farm it, so he wanted it to be scouted first.

"Alright, I don't think we can wait until they get their next shipment of drugs, so we need to take the warehouse and arrest the men." Raido decided after he thought about it. "Sakumo, what are the chances that you can track the drugs back from their destinations?"

Naruto considered this question He had never attempted to track an object to it's source before and wasn't sure he could do that. He wasn't even sure the scents would even be viable seeing as how he didn't know when they had gotten here. "I'm not sure. If we know who imported them it might be possible for me to track the scent back to the source. But with all the traffic coming in and out of the capital every day, it's probably unlikely. I would like to try to find a scent immediately after taking the warehouse. But this is more likely going to be resolved by questioning the guys in the warehouse."

Raido nodded. "Alright, keep watch on the warehouse with the detectives, don't take any action without me other than following the people if they leave. I will get the others and return in a bit."

Naruto watched Raido sprint off to collect the others.

Det. Watanabe asked, "if there are only three men, can't the two of you take them? Especially if you can make solid copies of yourself."

Naruto turned to the man and replied. "Now that we've found this place, we can concentrate our efforts here. The suspect we've been following up until now is more likely going to be turned over to you. We know where he lives and where he deals, so you can pick him up at your convenience. Once we move on this warehouse, if we are able to get an indication of where they are coming from, we may have to head out immediately before the trail goes cold. Likewise, this is more likely going to come down to questioning the people inside. If they know they are up against a ninja force instead of local police, they are much more likely to cooperate."

A few minutes later, Raido returned with his teammates. A rough plan was formed to take the men inside without them even realizing it. Raido, Kotetsu, and Izumo would enter through the back and prepare to knock out the men from behind. Naruto would knock on the door a few minutes later to get their attention while the others carried out the plan.

Fifteen minutes later, Naruto was walking up to the door, wearing a henge of the drug dealer they had been following for safety. He checked his watch before loudly knocking on the door. Naruto could hear a faint struggle on the other side of the door, but other than that, nothing. A minute later, Kotetsu opened the door for him.

As expected, his senior teammates had successfully subdued the three men. Naruto went right to work in examining and sniffing the boxes of opium trying to get a scent. Unfortunately, Naruto couldn't really get anything. From the scent around the warehouse, he supposed that the drugs had been here for a month and it would be almost impossible to track with the level of traffic surrounding the capital.

He turned to Raido and shook his head. "I could try circling the capital and try to pick up an entry point, but I think these have been here for about a month and with all the traffic coming in and out of the capital, it's a long shot."

Raido nodded, expecting this result. "Alright, go ahead and try. We'll set up in here for the interrogation, so come back when you're done.

Naruto nodded. This would be the first time having a mission that required a real interrogation and despite his thirst for new mission experiences, he wasn't in a hurry to learn about this particular skill.

-7-

Naruto circled the capital as planned, searching for any scent of the opium. Unfortunately, the brand of opium he was looking for wasn't exactly a unique scent different from the usual brands and came from many different places, so he wasn't able to even confirm an entry point for the capital. Reluctantly, he returned to report his failure to Raido at the warehouse.

As he entered, he expected to hear the sound of screams, but fortunately was spared that particular burden. Ninja interrogation was feared by many due to the lack of restraint and due to the number of torture experts that they were famous for having. He made his way over to where Raido was standing, next to one of the captives. When Raido looked at him Naruto shook his head to indicate a negative. His commander understood his lack of success.

By unspoken agreement, Naruto was kept out of the interrogations for the next day. Naruto supposed that he should feel slighted that he wasn't included, but even he felt he was too young for this. Eventually, one of the men broke and revealed that they were getting the same opium as everyone else in town, they just knew a doctor that could make it more effective. Within a few minutes of learning that, the police agreed to give one of the suppliers, and only one of them, a lighter sentence to the one who revealed who this doctor was and how to find them.

The next day, the police arrested a doctor from the main hospital. The doctor was using chemicals he had access to at the hospital to make the drugs more effective, but it also made the drugs more dangerous. Naruto was surprised at this piece of information. He had thought that the conclusion of the mission would end with his team tracking down and burning a field of poppies along with killing whoever was growing them.

Another thing that bugged him at first was the announcement to the public that the police had figured it out all on their own. According to the newspaper, the captain they had spoken to on the first day had led a task force to track down many of the opium dealers and were able to find the warehouse and doctor completely on their own. When he griped about this to his team, they laughed it off.

"Ninja's do the work and don't get the credit. That's the way the world works." Kotetsu explained, as if those two sentences explained everything.

Izumo took pity on him and explained further. "Ninjas don't officially exist when it comes to missions like this. We are expected to solve whatever problems people are having quietly and then act like we were never there. One of the things the client gets for our work is anonymity. Unless you are speaking to a superior, you are expected to let them take the credit."

Raido nodded his head, agreeing with Izumo's explanation. "Alright, let's head back to Konoha."

-7-

AN: Naruto's first B-rank mission. I was originally going to end the mission with them burning a field of poppies and killing the ones that were growing and importing it, but couldn't figure out how Naruto would track down the field. Next mission will have more action.

Watanabe is the fifth most popular last name in Japan, Fujimoto is the twenty-second, names are completely random. Raido, Kotetsu, and Izumo are not. Forgive me if in future chapters Raido is sometimes called Radio, that doesn't show up as a misspelled word ;)


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

1 day after Naruto's first B-rank mission

Naruto walked through the gate with his teammates for his first completed mission. He turned his head to his commander, Raido, to hear the expected, 'good job, now go home and rest.'

"Good job, men. Now, let's go to the training ground and get some taijutsu practice in." Raido said.

Naruto nodded along and almost took a step to go home when he comprehended what his commander had said. 'Wait, taijutsu practice?' he thought.

He could see Kotetsu looking at him with a smirk on his face. "Still daylight left, isn't there?"

"Yes there is." Raido confirmed, also looking at Naruto. "We take lots of missions and we train every day that we can. We will likely get another mission tomorrow morning, so rest accordingly tonight." Raido left no room for argument.

Naruto sighed and thought, 'I guess I did ask for this.'

They returned to their training ground and trained their taijutsu skills for the remainder of the day. Once again, Naruto fought against Izumo, the second worst taijutsu fighter on the team, although he was leagues ahead of Naruto without genjutsu. A couple hours into their training, Naruto asked why they weren't training any others skills.

"We didn't fight at all on this mission. When we don't fight on a mission, we fight in training." Raido said simplistically.

By the time their training was finished and before Naruto left to limp his way home, Raido had left to report mission success to his superiors and returned with a new B-rank mission for tomorrow. He told them to prepare for a bandit mission and be at the front gate by seven in the morning.

As soon as he arrived home, Naruto stumbled into the shower and allowed the water to rinse most of the grime and dirt away from his body. He scrubbed a few places that needed it before getting some food into his stomach and passing out on the bed. Today's taijutsu exercise had been the hardest since his first day at Fire Temple.

-8-

Morning came too soon for Naruto's taste, but his rest allowed him to recover most of his strength from the grueling training they had done yesterday. Naruto spent the early morning carefully stretching out his muscles, making sure he hadn't pulled one of them and getting ready for the day. He ate a light breakfast and repacked his bag for a bandit mission.

A while later, he was out the door and headed to the front gate to meet his team. As it was a few minutes to seven, he was the last one to arrive.

"Hey, he's awake! You owe me 100 ryo, Izumo." Kotetsu said as soon as he was in sight.

Izumo frowned. 'With yesterday's training, he shouldn't be able to move that well,' he thought. Indeed, he had been thinking they might have gone overboard a bit at the end.

Raido frowned as well. Usually it was a little tradition that the newest member of the team would have to be pulled out of bed the first few missions to acclimate them to this sort of mission and training schedule. Unfortunately, since their newest member had made it in time, that tradition might be over. "Alright, this is a standard bandit eradication mission. Intelligence indicates that this bandit group might be led by a missing-nin however, so we're up."

The rest of the team nodded to show that they understood. Naruto himself was a little anxious. After three years of being a ninja, he had yet to go up against another ninja in a real fight.

"Alright, the bandit group is reported to be near the southern coast of river country, so let's head out." Raido started to make for one of the western roads that would lead them to river country. Soon he was traveling at a low chunin level pace. He made sure to check on Sakumo from time to time to make sure he wasn't injured or too tired from yesterday's session, but to his surprise, he was keeping up.

The team continued at this approximate pace for the next few hours and stopped near a river to catch some fish for lunch. At this point, Kotetsu and Izumo were started to complain about their current pace. Yesterday's training might have been nothing new to them, but unlike Naruto, they didn't have a bijuu to use as a backup battery (not that any of them knows that).

At this point, Raido decided to give up trying to exhaust Sakumo and focus on getting his team ready for the mission. It wouldn't do to have his entire team too exhausted to fight against a missing-nin of unknown strength. 'Shame', he thought. 'Izumo and Kotetsu really hated that tradition when they were just starting out. It would have made them feel better to let someone else experience it.' On this note, Raido decided to extend the break by a few hours and let his team relax. It was a nice day after all.

After lunch and a nap for his cute little chunin, Raido once again ordered them to move out. This time they moved toward River country at a more moderate pace, but were still able to maintain a good speed.

-8-

After another day of travel they arrived at the approximate location of the bandit group. Naruto suspected this is where he could display some of his skills in finding the bandits. It there was one thing Naruto learned from his days in search and rescue, it was that there was always a bandit group near major roads. "Unless you have a better way of tracking down the group, we should travel along the major roads and look for recent activity."

Raido looked at Naruto and pondered what he had said. His group had a lot of experience fighting bandits and lower rank ninja, but not a lot of tracking experience. Eventually, he nodded to Naruto to go ahead.

Naruto led them along the major roads until he sighted a rock outcropping overlooking a large portion of the road. He made a detour to examine the spot as a possible lookout position for bandits. As he expected, when he arrived he found recent signs that there was someone observing traffic along the roads. Naruto was able to pick up a few scents that led into the forest. He informed his team and they were in hot pursuit of the scent.

About five minutes later, they slowed down due to definite signs of a large group passing this way. Raido once again took over as lead for the group, now that the trail was obvious. The ninja slowly made their way through the treetops, paying close attention to anyone nearby.

After another five minutes, they came upon the outskirts of the bandit camp. It was indeed a large bandit group of about 150 men. If Naruto were alone or with a genin team, he would not try to engage this group.

Raido retreated with the group to a safe distance to hold a short meeting. "Good job on finding the group Sakumo." Raido first congratulated his newest teammate, knowing that it would have taken longer without him. "Let's scout out the layout, potential hostages, location of the leaders, and if one of them has ninja training. Keep your distances and suppress your chakra. Spread out and observe, we'll meet back here in 90 minutes."

Izumo and Kotetsu each took one of the sides of the bandit camp while Raido directed Naruto to take up position where they were before, while he circled around to the other side. Naruto returned to their previous position while trying to remain as stealthy as possible. He stayed as hidden as possible and kept his chakra ready to instigate a genjutsu on anyone that might become aware of him.

Naruto secured himself in his position for another minute before he calmed down enough to start observing the bandit group. He took note of the number of tents, where they stored the valuables they collected, and where they kept their hostages. From what Naruto had observed, they set up a 'brothel' near the north side of their camp, where men were frequently entering and exiting. He had no idea where the leadership was and had seen no sign of any ninja. He continued observing for more than an hour before starting to make his way back to their meeting spot.

He waited at the meeting spot for a few minutes, waiting for the others to arrive one by one. After Raido had returned from the other side, he held a briefing to determine their attack plan. "Did anyone get eyes on any ninja?" he asked.

Naruto shook his head no as he saw Izumo and Kotetsu do the same.

"Neither did I." He said shortly. "How about the leadership?"

Again, Naruto shook his head no, along with Kotetsu. Izumo however, looked pensive. Raido turned to Izumo and made a motion for him to explain.

"I can't say for sure..." Izumo began, "but I did notice that some of the bandits were behaving better around the south-eastern portion. Usually bandits are only quiet right before a raid and well behaved in front of their leadership. It could be that their leader was passing through that area, or it could be that his tent is in the area."

Raido nodded, imagining the layout of the camp in his head and imagining the south-eastern portion. "Well, that area did seem a bit cleaner than the northern portion."

Naruto gave a small shudder as he remembered what was in the northern portion.

"Sakumo, how many clones can you make?" Raido asked.

"Depends on what type. I was warned not to make too many shadow clones because it can lead to chakra exhaustion or worse, but if I had a stable water source, I could make dozens of water clones. They only have about ten percent of my power, but against bandits, they should take out a considerable chunk of them before being defeated." Naruto answered, slightly put out that he was trying to hide his massive chakra reserves.

Raido nodded. "Well, there is a river a hundred meters to the west, focus on making as many clones as you can and sending them into the camp. Try to send them into the camp in waves, so the bandits think that our force is larger than it is. Kotetsu and I will wait on the east side, waiting for the ninja, if there is one, to reveal himself. Kotetsu and I will deal with any bandit that tries to flee the battle and if the ninja appears, I will engage him. Izumo, you are in charge of securing the hostages in the north side. As soon as Sakumo's first wave hits the camp, clear out the men and secure the hostages."

All three nodded their heads at the plan and prepared themselves. Naruto was glad that he hadn't been given Izumo's job of securing the women.

Raido confirmed that they understood his plan. "Good, take ten minutes to get into position, and start the operation when Sakumo sends his first wave. Sakumo, try to start when no one is near the river, but if it isn't clear in the next half hour, wait until it is mostly empty."

-8-

Fifteen minutes later, Naruto was standing in the trees near the river. Naruto observed a bandit taking a bath in the river. 'Funny, I didn't think bandits knew how to bathe' he thought to himself. A few minutes later, the bandit finished and made his way back to the camp. Naruto took one final look around before jumping down to the water. He stood upon it, with the first chakra control exercise he had learned and prepared to make water clones. He knew that he had deceived the others by understating how much chakra he had, but hopefully they wouldn't notice the shadow clones he would be slipping in with the water clones. The shadow clones would be able to use his primary skill of genjutsu and help the water clones be more victorious.

He quickly ran through the hand seals to make twenty water clones and created an extra five shadow clones to send in as well. He gave the clones an attack sign and watched as they charged the camp. He observed the clones as they started their assault before turning back to the water to make a dozen more.

-8-

Izumo hung back quietly just outside camp in the treetops. This wasn't exactly his favorite assignment, but stood ready to do it. He hung out here, mentally preparing himself for the degradation that he was about to observe and waited for the attack of the clones.

It came so suddenly that he was almost surprised by it himself, one moment he was observing the camp as it went about it's deceptively peaceful ways, the next, men were screaming and everyone was confused about what was happening.

Izumo took this as his signal and henged himself into a bandit to get into position. In the confusion, no one noticed a bandit that nobody knew, slipping into the tent holding the women. Once inside, Izumo stabbed the guards with kunai and threw shuriken at the backs of the men currently assaulting the women. They cried out in pain, but it seemed to be lost in all the confusion happening outside.

-8-

Raido and Kotetsu observed the scene of the bandits being assaulted by clones. They had the best vantage point and had observed Sakumo's clones surprising the bandits and taking a tenth of them out of the fight before they even knew what was going on. After a minute however, they could see the confusion lessening, while fury and control had returned to the bandits.

Raido payed special attention to who was trying to return control to the bandits, hoping to spot some ninja techniques to highlight his target. He trusted that Kotetsu was taking out the men that had fled in the initial confusion and would continue to do so as more men fell in battle.

There. As one of the men emerged from a tent, Raido saw that no less than eight bandits turned to him, to ask him what to do. Raido could see that the man was keeping himself calm and was paying attention to the clones, only to smirk when he saw one of the clones burst into water.

Raido began his approach as the leader ordered his men to deal with the clones. He moved quickly while remaining as quiet as possible. He noticed one of the bandits ahead of him turn around, eyes widening as he saw a ninja approaching from behind. Raido abandoned stealth and focused on speed, intent on taking out the ninja before he spotted him. He threw a pair of shuriken at the ninja, while his back was still turned.

-8-

Kouhei heard the cries and confusion of his men, wondering what was going on. As he listened to the sounds and prepared himself, he knew of only two things it could be. Either it was another bandit group, fighting for control of this area, unlikely, or it was a ninja raid. As he emerged from his tent, he could see what looked like a dozen ninja fighting against his men. But that couldn't be, his bandits weren't worth that much trouble. He observed the ninja for a few seconds before he noticed that they were all the same, clones then. At that point he saw one of them burst into water. 'Water clones, and due to the fact that the ninja who made them is so short, probably a genin team,' he thought. 'But it this is a genin team, where is the jonin.' He heard one of his men gasp while looking behind him before grabbing the man and using him as a shield.

Two shuriken hit the mans chest, causing him to gasp and send a look of betrayal at his leader. Kouhei gazed disinterested at his fallen subordinate before turning his attention to the approaching jonin. 'Ah, there he is.'

-8-

Raido engaged the missing-nin switching between taijutsu, kunai, and the occasional jutsu. His opponent was good, better than most of the bandit leaders who typically only had a few years of genin level experience.

"You're pretty good." the missing-nin told him. "But what are you going to do when my partner kills your genin."

"Partner?" Raido said, while also in his head questioning why he said genin.

"That's right, you didn't think it was just me did you? He's not as good as me, but he should make short work of your genin students." The missing-nin taunted.

Raido smirked at the missing-nin while he made the connection of what he was referring to. "Oh I see. Are you talking about the one making the clones? He's not a genin, he's a chunin, and he's the rookie member of our team." Raido responded, wiping the smirk off the face of his opponent.

At this comment the missing-nin did look a little sick, realizing that he might be telling the truth, if that was indeed the truth. In fact, now that he thought about it, was that a second wave of clones?

-8-

Naruto was actually sending in his third wave of clones. These ones were actually half water clones and half shadow clones, and only ten of them. Naruto wanted to make it seem like he was running low, so that the bandits wouldn't retreat, but also wouldn't advance on his position. As he absorbed the memories of his fallen shadow clones, he could tell that he had already beaten roughly half of the bandits. He had observed Raido fighting the ninja leader from afar and noticed the bandits steering clear of the area they were holding the women, so the others were doing their jobs.

As another clone dispelled, Naruto found himself suddenly nervous. His clone had been dispelled by someone who looked just like all the other bandits, but who moved like a ninja. In fact, according to where his clone was standing, he was probably on his way here.

Naruto quickly made another wave of clones, to send in to the bandits away from the path the bandit ninja was headed toward him. He prepared himself both physically and mentally for what would might be a tough fight.

As the ninja approached, Naruto could observed that he was indeed dressed like a bandit, as a form of camouflage. He held a sword, but unlike the other bandits, Naruto could tell that he knew how to use it other than the basic 'pointy end goes in the other guy' strategy that the rest of the bandits seemed to know. Naruto decided to stick with what he knew and not hold back. He started preparing to cast genjutsu while drawing a pair of kunai, one for each hand.

The other nin, seemingly in a hurry to destroy the creator of the clones, rushed him. He approached in with a basic battojutsu stance, to draw his sword with maximum speed and strength. Naruto dodged by ducking under the blade and attacking from the side. The bandit quickly sidestepped his attack and attacked him once again with the sword.

Naruto was having trouble with his normal strategy. Normally when he practiced this, his opponent was either unarmed or didn't know how to use a sword. Every time that Naruto saw an opening that he tried to exploit, he would have to sacrifice his attack half way through in order to defend. Naruto created the illusion of an open target for the bandit to strike, and when he did Naruto was able to get a few minor cuts into the other ninja, but nothing serious.

Eventually, Naruto decided to put some distance between himself and the sword user and try ninjutsu. He backed off, tucking the kunai back into his pouch and let his hands fly through seals. As the ninja approached, Naruto unleashed a great fireball directly at his target.

Naruto remained on alert as the smoke cleared revealing a wooden log. 'Kawarimi!' Naruto thought. He jumped to the side as he was alerted to some movement in the corner of his eye. A pair of shuriken sailed by his last location as Naruto tried to find their source. He created a couple of shadow clones and sent them into the forest the shuriken had come from while staying on high alert.

Confused as to where the other ninja was, Naruto decided to go for a little stealth himself. He created dozens of regular incorporeal clones along with a single shadow clone. He then used the Earth Release: Underground Move (1) jutsu to sink into the ground, hoping the enemy would mistake his shadow clone for him.

A minute later, the enemy ninja burst out of the water, into the clones and correctly picked out the correct corporeal clone. The shadow clone dodged in order to get the enemy into correct position when Naruto struck. He successfully grabbed one of the feet of the enemy ninja and dragged him under ground.

The enemy was good and able to successfully able to stop himself before he fell too far in, but at that point one of his legs was almost completely underground with a good portion of his other leg. The clone capitalized on this momentum by hurtling a pair of kunai at the ninja, one which was hidden by a genjutsu. The ninja blocked the visible kunai, but unfortunately, this exposed his shoulder to the hidden kunai. Even more unfortunate for him was that it was his sword arm's shoulder and it caused him to forget about the enemy underneath him. When he felt a kunai pierce his back, he knew it was all over.

-8-

Raido finished up with the missing-nin a few minutes later. He was good for a missing-nin, but even he couldn't go up against a Konoha jonin for long. He became more aware of his surroundings to see that with their leader dead, the remainder of the bandits decided that now was a good time to flee. He rushed toward the north, where a majority were fleeing and started to finish off the rest. Within a few minutes, Raido had stabbed the last bandit and looked around to see if their was anyone else. Since it was the northern part of the camp, he made a call out to his companion, that should be in the area. "Izumo, are you secure?"

Izumo poked his head out of the large tent that held the women. "Hey, all secure here. We done?"

"There may be another ninja, have you seen any others?" Raido asked.

Izumo shook his head in the negative.

"Alright, look for Kotetsu and see if he needs any help with the bandits who managed to get away. I'll check with Sakumo." Raido ordered the chunin as he headed for the river.

As he arrived at the river, he found a single bandit, halfway buried in the earth, but no Sakumo. It was not until a few minutes later that Sakumo himself turned up back at the camp.

"Sakumo, where have you been?" Raido demanded.

"I fought a ninja who was dressed up like a bandit. We fought for a while before I was able to beat him. After that, the bandits nearby that saw our fight decided to flee. I followed most of them as they were headed south to finish them off." Naruto responded.

Raido listened to his response and calmed down a bit. He directed Sakumo to scout out the camp and look for any stragglers that needed to be finished off while he checked on the hostages. He hoped they came from someplace close that he could drop them off on the way home.

-8-

The team reunited and spent the rest of the day cleaning up the camp. The bodies of the bandits were collected and burned, the women were spread out in tents and given food and basic medical treatment, and the missing-nin were identified. The missing-nin Raido had fought was an Ame B-rank missing-nin identified as Kouhei Inaga. The ninja Naruto had fought was unidentified, but thought to be either too low ranked to be known or a student of Kouhei's.

After they collected everything of value from the camp, Raido began to organize a journey to return the women to their villages. It turns out that all but one of the women originated from two of the adjacent towns, one to the east and the other to the west. Raido sent Izumo and Kotetsu ahead to each of the villages with a list of the women they had recovered and to let them make preparations to take them back in. Raido and Naruto then each took half of the women, to start the journey to the towns.

The towns were not far from the camp, but at civilian pace, especially wounded and weak civilian pace, it took a couple of days. Once the women were safely back home, the ninja agreed to reunite once again at the bandit camp, in case they missed anything.

They performed a deeper look around the camp, now that they didn't have women looking over their shoulders and found a few stashes that contained some of the monetary loot from their raids. Since this was a larger bandit force, it was quite substantial. They decided to camp here, since it was so late in the day, but that didn't stop them from having a brief training session, to remind them of what they would be doing once they returned to Konoha.

The next day they set out for their return back to their village. Once again, Raido led them at a speed that ensured that by lunchtime, everyone was breathing heavily. Apparently, now that they were not headed to a mission, there was no harm in exhausting their team. During their lunch break, Raido made Naruto recount every aspect of his fight and his team spent most of their time analyzing what he had done correctly and more importantly, where he had screwed up.

"Changing the fighting dynamic might have been the correct thing to do, but losing track of him the moment you did was a very foolish thing." Raido scolded him. "You gave him too much time to recognize the fireball coming and should have expected him to use a kawarimi to escape. You should have tracked his kawarimi and hit him again."

Izumo and Kotetsu nodded in agreement.

Naruto frowned at his team ganging up on him, but reminded himself of why he chose this team. "Then could you help me with those sort of situations when we return to Konoha?"

Raido grinned slightly to himself. 'At least the kid is willing to work on his faults,' he thought to himself. "Sure, we'll run you into the ground with more training."

Izumo and Kotetsu smirked while Naruto grimaced.

-8-

For the next few months, this is the way their team had gone about. They took a B-rank mission, traveled as fast as possible while still being fresh for their mission, then trained hard when in Konoha. They then repeated this much faster than Naruto was used to. The variety of missions was also a new experience for Naruto. He was used to missions happening almost the exact same way with only the details being different. In the last few months his team had done protection missions for wealthy clients, delivery of valuable goods, more bandit eradications, even an industrial espionage mission.

Naruto struggled to go along with this sort of routine, but he felt like sometimes he was just barely keeping up. The training was hard, the missions were new, and he barely had any time to do anything other than sleep. Indeed, he hadn't even been able to visit Hana since he started.

His team was on its way to yet another B-rank mission. Their team had been set up to take another mission when a call for backup had come in to the mission office. A single chunin who was investigating civil unrest in cities to the south discovered that their were enemy spies trying to instigate riots and requested backup to apprehend the spies and quell the riots.

So they were now on their way to Toyosato, a large city in the south, near the border of Tea Country. As Naruto had come to expect from Raido, they rushed here at full speed, only slowing down to make sure they were fresh for the mission. When they arrived in the city, they made their way to the rally point the chunin had said he would be. Upon looking around for their comrade, the team found him, much to their surprise.

To Naruto, the chunin was vaguely familiar, to everyone else, it was a short chunin even shorter than their own short chunin. It was Itachi Uchiha.

Once the novelty of being briefed by such a small child wore off. They listened carefully to the briefing.

"After investigating the leads that the local detectives had produced, I went undercover in some of the less reputable areas. It was there that I discovered, quite by accident, one of the people who was deliberately trying to rile people up." Itachi briefed, in an almost monotone voice. "I listened to some of the things that the man was saying before calling for police backup to arrest the man. I investigated some of the things he was saying and found out that there has been a series of small crimes that are linked to what he he doing."

"What kind of crimes?" Raido asked.

"For instance, a few days ago the payroll money was stolen from a steelworkers factory, so the management was unable to pay it's workers. The spy then used this as a point to rile up the workers and told them that they would be working for free soon. That any trust they placed in management would only allow them to take advantage of the situation and reduce their wages permanently." Itachi explained rationally. "If these to incidences are connected, which I believe they are, it means that there is some sort of conspiracy to rile up the people and create civil unrest. Although I have no idea who is behind it at this point or to what end they're doing this."

Raido listened to Itachi's briefing and after thinking carefully, agreed with his determination. "Alright, Itachi will continue to brief me on everything he has discovered. Izumo and Kotetsu, you will go to where the police are holding the man and begin an interrogation to find out what else he has planned, who his accomplices are, and whatever else you can find out. Sakumo, go with them and get his scent, then create as many clones as you can to try and track his across the city, see if you can find any of the other places he has been." Raido turned to Itachi and asked, "where did you arrest him?"

Itachi gave him the location and Raido ordered Naruto to start there after he had gotten his scent. The team then broke apart to begin their assignments. Naruto followed Izumo and Kotetsu to the police station to get his scent and begin his search. He didn't have a great record of tracking within cities, but it wasn't a bad idea to start with during the first few stages of an investigation.

Naruto got the scent and returned to the bar to try and locate a trail from the spy. As expected, he was able to pick up the man's scent from within the bar, but was unable to get a trail leading anywhere. At this point, Naruto decided to just go all out this one time and try to get some results. He made dozens of shadow clones, henged them to have random appearances and spread them out all over town to get locations on where the man might have been.

He usually wasn't this impetuous, but realized that the presence of a younger chunin was making him slightly insecure. He remembered the boy from the academy graduation and wasn't too surprised to see that he was a chunin as well.

After a few hours of random searching for scent trails, one of his clones dispelled, alerting him to a strong concentration of the man's scent. Naruto immediately headed to where the clone had dispelled.

As he looked around the place with his scent, Naruto was confused about the location he was in. 'Why would he be here of all places?' Indeed, this was a graveyard and yet, Naruto picked up his scent in differing concentrations all over the place. He checked a few of the tombstones and found that almost everyone here had been dead for over fifty years and their wasn't a single visitor in sight.

In the end he decided to leave a few clones in adjacent to the area and return to find Raido to report what he had found.

-8-

The team met again in a small briefing room of the police station. Raido began the meeting by filling them in on the important details he had gleamed from Itachi. "So, after all that, I would have to agree with Itachi's assessment of the situation. There is an organized attempt to create civil unrest and destabilize the region. Izumo, Kotetsu, Have you found anything out from the prisoner?"

Kotetsu shook his head while Izumo responded. "No, I don't know who this guy is, but I suspect he's been trained to resist interrogation. That in itself tells us something and gives credit that you are correct in your conclusions."

Raido nodded at this, unhappy that he had resisted interrogation and given more credence to their conclusion. "Sakumo, anything?"

Naruto blinked, trying one last time to think of why he would be there before responding. "I was able to find a place that he has been spending a large amount of time. I have also determined that he has been there on at least five other occasions."

"Where?" Raido asked, thankful for at least some kind of lead.

Naruto sighed one last time. "A graveyard."

"A graveyard?" his team responded.

"Yes, and not just any graveyard. I didn't find any evidence that anyone had been buried in that particular graveyard in decades." Naruto responded.

Raido looked thoughtful at that remark. "It could be a meeting spot for anyone else he is working with."

The entire team contemplated what he had said.

"Alright, Kotetsu and Izumo will continue interrogating the spy. Itachi and I will go with Sakumo to the graveyard to scout it out and start a watch." Raido directed his team.

"I have a couple clones there right now, doing that exact thing." Naruto informed his commander.

"Good." Raido responded, happy that it had already been started.

-8-

Raido scouted out the graveyard quickly, but carefully. He had seen that it was indeed an older graveyard, that had run out of room for newer occupants, but was still maintained by the city. It would be a pretty good meeting spot due to the absence of any people, but it would make an even better stash spot, which is why he was carefully looking for any disturbed ground.

Assuming that Sakumo was correct in his tracking, and Raido had no reason to think he wasn't, there was something about this spot that was important, and he was going to find out what that was. He could see Itachi had his sharingan active and looking for discrepancies, so that was an asset for this mission.

Eventually, Itachi waved them over to where he was standing. Raido and Naruto both looked around for anything out of the ordinary, but couldn't see anything. "What's up?" Raido asked after he couldn't see anything.

Itachi replied with the same monotone voice, "the ground has been disturbed through the usage of an earth jutsu here."

Raido looked again and still couldn't see anything wrong, but trusted in the famed dojutsu. He then arrived at the more important question. 'Should we dig it up, or wait for someone else to dig it up?' That indeed was the question. If they dug it up and yielded nothing, whoever might come along to retrieve it with an earth jutsu might flee when he notice the package was gone. On the other hand, if they waited for someone to come along, they might miss out on an important clue.

"Can either of you two dig up the package without disturbing the earth?" Raido asked the two young chunin.

Naruto looked at Itachi before responding. "I could use my underground moving technique and 'drag' it to someplace we don't mind disturbing."

Raido turned to Itachi to see if he had a better idea, but he merely shook his head in the negative. They spread out to find a location that Sakumo could bring up the package that would be out of sight. Eventually, they found a patch of earth between two bushes about fifteen meters from the spot. Naruto took a deep breath before sinking into the earth and dragging the package horizontally, under the earth, zigzagging to avoid the buried dead.

He had to surface a few times both for air and to make sure he was on course, but eventually he navigated to the correct spot. He surfaced with the package, slowly bringing it up, to disturb the earth as little as possible. Eventually, he brought up a small chest.

The others gathered around as Raido opened it slowly, checking for internal tripwires. After finding none, he opened it up completely to inspect the contents. Inside were several papers and a few maps. The maps were of this region of Fire country, a city map, and a couple of neighborhood maps of the city. The maps had several locations circled around them and movement plans on the street. The papers contained mostly plans and ideas for the instigation of riots and civil unrest. There was one other letter however, that contained orders for the team on their mission.

 _Your team is to make their way to the city of_ _Toyosato_ _and begin a disinformation campaign in order to create unrest in the region. Your mission is to take attention away from the northern borders of Fire country as much as possible for the foreseeable future. Use your team to create disturbances within the government and major business's while sewing discontent among the common class. Instigate riots and escalate matters wherever possible. Your goal is to see this spread across the entire region, so when completed in_ _Toyosato_ _, see to the spread of this goal at your discretion._

The note was unsigned but had very distinctive penmanship. Upon reading this, Raido's eyes widened significantly, knowing this to be very important. Too important to rebury and use as bait. He double checked the chest for anything else before closing it and handing it to his teammate. "Sakumo, bury this back where it was. Keep monitoring this graveyard from a distance and follow anyone that comes near. I'll work out a schedule to relieve you in a few hours."

Naruto nodded back and proceeded accordingly. He hadn't read the note, but hadn't seen Raido quite so startled before. He sunk into the ground to begin putting the chest back in place.

-8-

When Naruto had been relieved four hours later by Itachi, he made his way back to the police station. When he arrived he immediately headed to the briefing room where Raido allowed him to read the note. At first, it sounded pretty much like he had expected orders for this kind of mission to say. On his second look however, he payed more attention to the second sentence of the note. ' _take attention away from the northern borders_.' This mission was a means to an end, making Konoha and the Daimyo pay more attention to the south, so the northern borders will be more exposed.

He looked at the maps and other papers before asking his commander what their next move would be.

Raido answered seriously. "The papers do show a lot of their plans and the local police are checking into them discretely. Aside from that we to have a plan for an upcoming riot, so we believe we can capture the leaders and the remainder of the team."

Naruto nodded and yawned. "Alright, do we have a place to sleep yet? I'd like to rest a little before my next shift, if that's alright?"

"Go ahead, the police are letting us use one of their safe houses, here is the address." Raido handed him a note of paper with the address written down.

Naruto made to leave when Raido spoke once more. "Sakumo... good work finding the graveyard. Things might have been very bad if you hadn't found it. Not just for this mission, but possibly for all of Fire country." Raido said with a severity of seriousness that Naruto had seldom heard him speak with.

-8-

The next few days had proceeded roughly according to plan. They were able to slightly quell a lot of the misunderstandings that the agents had created, but could still tell that a riot might be imminent. They hadn't been able to catch any of the other agents and so far watch over the graveyard had yielded nothing. Either the enemy agents were onto them, or they didn't need to access the contents of the chest.

When police had announced the gathering of people near one of the industrial areas, Raido gathered the entire team together to prepare for a riot. The fact that it was occurring in a section of town where one of the maps had a large X only further cemented the idea. The team would be breaking into three groups: Sakumo and Itachi, Izumo and Kotetsu, and Raido with a police liaison. Each team was given duplicate orders and given a section to patrol. They were to identify and capture the instigators of the riot and stop it from escalating.

As Naruto and Itachi were standing on the roof of a factory, overlooking the crowd they both realized that this was the first time they were alone together.

"You are the one who beat me in the taijutsu spar at the academy, aren't you?" Itachi said suddenly.

Naruto looked over to the younger boy before nodding his head.

"How old are you?"

Naruto paused at the question before answering. "Twelve, you?"

"Eleven. Is taijutsu your specialty?"

Naruto considered the question, thinking that this supposition was due to the fact that it was a primarily taijutsu oriented team and his victory over the boy in the exams. "No, in fact I joined this team so that I could better develop my taijutsu, which was below average when I joined."

Itachi looked even more confused at this. "Then how did you beat me in the academy?"

"I watched you fight against the instructor previously, because I suspected they would pair the two of us up together, due to our similar ages. I noticed that your fighting style was a bit similar to mine in that we were both used to fighting against people bigger than us. I created a situation where it seemed you could take advantage of a weakness of mine, while actually revealing one of your own in the process."

The Uchiha slightly glared at him before turning his attention back to the crowd. He made a motion to speak again when his attention was drawn to something else. "Wait, I see something."

Naruto looked at his eyes to try and figure out where he was looking, but couldn't see anything. "What is it?"

Itachi stared for half a minute before confirming. "Yes... there is a man with chakra in the crowd using genjutsu to egg on the people near him."

Naruto looked at him strangely. "How do you know he's using genjutsu?"

"The sharingan can see chakra to a degree and is not fooled by genjutsu in the slightest." Itachi responded as if everyone knew that.

But everyone did not know that, in fact, there was one person who definitely didn't know that. Naruto would have liked to keep focusing on this fact, but forced himself to keep his attention on the mission. "Where is he? What does he look like?"

"He's at the edge of the northern side of the crowd. He's six feet tall, short black hair, wearing workers coveralls."

Naruto spotted the man Itachi was referring to. "Alright, keep your eyes on him. I'll circle around and try to catch him unaware." Naruto made a single shadow clone to stay with Itachi. "If he moves, tell my clone and it will dispel. I will get the message and respond accordingly. I will try to take him out with surprise, if it looks like I'm having trouble, feel free to assist." Naruto started backing away and making his way to circle the riot from the right.

Itachi nodded and confirmed what Naruto had said, keeping his eyes glued to the target. After a few minutes, he saw another person with chakra walking toward the man. He turned to the clone and made to warn him of the second man. "There's a second man approaching, he has chakra as well and is weaving genjutsu of his own."

The clone looked at the second man that Itachi had identified, but recognized it. "That's the boss. It's one of the forms he commonly takes."

Once Itachi knew that he paid more attention to the genjutsu Sakumo was weaving. It appeared that Sakumo was using genjutsu not to hide himself, but to make himself more forgettable. He appeared to be just another face in the crowd, to be looked at briefly, but not examined. As he made his approach to the suspect, Itachi could see that the man had no idea what was coming. Sakumo was behind him and about to make his move when his genjutsu changed. Itachi could see that he was making it seem like the crowd suddenly exploded with rage and screams, about to turn into a full blown riot. The suspect was so confused by the unexpected change in the crowed that he didn't become aware of the stunning blow to the head. He was dazed for the next few seconds, too dazed that by the time he realized that he was in a sleeper hold, he was already blacking out. 'Efficient,' Itachi noted. The suspect was out like a light before he realized what was going on. And Sakumo was already adjusting his genjutsu so that the crowd around him didn't notice him taking the man's unconscious body away.

-8-

A few hours later, the team was once more at the police station, the crowd had been dispersed before in had turned into a riot, and their team had captured two spies trying to instigate the riot. Raido had captured one of the instigators on his own and placed the man into a cell alongside his accomplice. When Naruto and Itachi returned with one of their own and the crowd had dispersed, they suspected they had succeeded in their mission.

Itachi and the boiler team hung around for a few more days, trying to spot any signs of more civil unrest, but it seemed to be quiet. There was still a bit of grumbling from previous grievances, but without any additional ones and with the old grievances being fixed one by one, the people were settling down.

Unfortunately, when they were about to begin their interrogations the next day, they stumbled on a bit of a surprise. Each man was dead inside of their cell.

An autopsy was performed and the preliminary cause of death was revealed to be cyanide poisoning. It was suspected that the men killed themselves due to the fact that they were captured and had failed in their mission.

After the full autopsy was performed, doctors had discovered that each man had a portion of skin on a different place on each of their bodies that had been cut away. The doctor speculated that these were the hiding places they had hidden their cyanide suicide pills. Each of them had a small plastic bag containing a suicide pill hidden somewhere on their bodies, beneath the skin. It was a disturbing thought and screamed of competence. These were not simple terrorists or mercenaries, these were trained enemy agents.

Either way, the mission was now completed for Itachi and the backup team. They were returning to Konoha with the evidence they had recovered from the chest and the bodies of the men. Konoha would perform a second and much deeper autopsy. They would discover anything that the civilians had missed.

Naruto was deep in thought on the journey home. He had always thought that his genjutsu's were one of his greatest strength. However, a deeper conversation with Itachi had altered that line of thinking. Itachi had been able to recognize every step of his genjutsu with his sharingan and had informed him that someone with the byakugan could do the same.

He supposed he should feel grateful that the only two doujustus in the world both belonged to clans of Konoha, who were therefore his allies, but he couldn't stop the feeling they were giving him. He felt a little cheated that some people could identify his illusions for being such with ease and couldn't help but fear that others could do the same.

Naruto resolved himself to study and research how the sharingan and other dojutsu were able to identify and read his genjutsu. How they were able to do all the things they could do, and how he could make genjutsu's that would fool not just them, but everyone.

-8-

A elderly man made his way past the secret checkpoint of Anbu, only known to a few people. He walked a route he was well familiar with to reach his destination. He nodded at the secretary, who waved him in. A brief knock on the door announced that he was coming in as he made his way into the well known office.

"Homura." The man sitting behind the desk stated, as if confirming his existence.

"Hiruzen, I've just become aware of a mission that turned up something important." Homura explained to the aging Hokage.

"What is it?"

"Young Itachi Uchiha was on a C-rank solo mission to investigate rumors of civil unrest in the southern city of Toyosato. He stumbled on an active plot by foreign ninja to create civil unrest in the region and called for backup. Boiler team three responded and was on site a day after receiving the notice. Once there, their team tracker discovered a stash site the foreign ninja were using and recovered some of their plans and a note written by their superior with their orders. The team used the plans to identify key areas and were able to capture three members of the team." Homura explained.

"Has the team interrogated the spies yet?" The Hokage asked.

"They all had suicide pills hidden beneath their skin and took them after their attempt to create a riot failed. The team brought back their bodies."

The Hokage nodded before asking, "why bring this to my attention now?"

Homura pulled out a plastic bag containing the handwritten note. "This is the note they recovered."

The Hokage read the note, before becoming still when he recognized the handwriting. He gave the note back to Homura and motioned for him to leave.

As Homura was leaving, he heard the Hokage say out loud to no one. "Orochimaru, what are you up to?"

-8-

AN

Itachi was a part of genin team 2 until he became a chunin at age 10. He joined Anbu team Ro at age 11. This mission happens in between those two.

One question I get asked most often is how old Hana is. For the record Hana is roughly four years older than Naruto right now. I know that in the cannon she is approximately Itachi's age, but here she is older. I'm trying to keep everyone else the same age.

1\. Also known as Earth Release: Underground Projection Fish Technique, I just went with the english name because I like it a little better. (Thank you, Narutopedia)


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

After the last mission, Naruto had become obsessed with the idea of creating a genjutsu that couldn't be identified by a doujutsu or through other means. He started visiting the library more often and sacrificing his sleep and what little free time he had to study more.

Fortunately, Raido had recently revealed that typically his team would be as rough as possible on their newest member for the first few months, in order to acclimate them to this sort of life. Unfortunately, for them at least, Kotetsu and Izumo were the ones doing most of the complaining about this and Raido had finally decided to call it off. They now had more free time to rest and train individually, but they still took B-ranks quite often and trained as a team more often than they trained individually.

He had found many books containing vague descriptions of the doujutsus, but most of his research into the subject had been discovered by just talking to members of the two clans. After a couple of months, he had not found any more information other than what he had gathered, so unless he suddenly activated a hidden unknown doujutsu ability of his own, he would have to make due with what he had found.

The byakugan was an eye that could see chakra in it's base form. It had telescoping effects and a nearly 360 degree range of vision when active. They could see through walls like an x-ray and could identify the nearly impossible to find tenkutsu with shocking accuracy.

The sharingan had two primary abilities called the eye of insight and the eye of hypnotism. First of all, they can see chakra, to a lesser degree than the byakugan, but due to this, can see right through genjutsu. The eye of insight also gives them their famous copy ability. They can copy or mimic anyone with almost perfect accuracy, and with this ability, copy ninjutsu and taijutsu almost as well as the original.

The eye of hypnotism is a powerful genjutsu that can be applied through direct eye contact. This is also tied to the eyes rumored ability to see the future. This ability is most likely a combination of being able to accurately mimic people and use genjutsu at the same time.

In short, both doujutsu's were quite powerful, with the sharingan appearing to be superior, at least in Naruto's opinion. On the other hand, almost every Hyuuga had the byakugan, whereas only about half of the Uchiha ever activated the sharingan. While researching, he came across rumors of a third, even more powerful doujutsu called the rinnegan, but was unable to find anything on that other than the tale of the sage and the ripple like design of the eyes.

With this, Naruto began the arduous task of trying to identify ways to hide his genjutsu from people with these abilities.

-9-

Time skip: 2 years later.

Naruto had grown quite a bit lately. He was no longer just a short kid who couldn't possibly be a chunin but a teenager with advancing skills. Two years on a team that focused on taijutsu had done him quite a bit of good and helped him raise his physical abilities to a very advanced level. He would not say it was his greatest skill, but he could now fight on almost even terms with his commander Raido. And unless he fought both of them together, he could now consistently come out ahead of both Izumo and Kotetsu.

He had kept up on his chakra control and elemental chakra control, but had neglected his ninjutsu studies, as he had developed those quite a bit back when he was in search and rescue. Aside from focusing on his taijutsu, he continued his research into genjutsu whenever he could. He didn't think he was good enough to completely hide his abilities from a doujutsu user, but he felt he had made some progress.

He felt that his deepest progress came when he asked the fundamental questions of how exactly did doujutsu reveal chakra? How does a person dispel foreign chakra from their minds? He briefly came up with the idea that if he couldn't use genjutsu on the mind of a person with a doujutsu, than perhaps he could use genjutsu on the eyes of a person with a doujutsu.

This particular leap of thought had come to him after some deep thinking, but still took a lot of research. After all, genjutsu was the field of fooling the mind. How could he adjust that to create a new field designed to fool special eyes? This particular question had him returning to an old friend, who he hadn't seen in a while.

Hana was a bit angry at him for ignoring her for so long, but was able to get over it when he explained his previous schedule to her. She like him, was used to accepting missions when they came in, but expected at least a bit of a break in between missions. To hear that he had been run ragged for months on end sparked a bit of a protective emotion in her, that made her want to show his commander some of her clan techniques.

Once he explained that he was looking for a way to make his genjutsus more effective, especially against doujutsu users, she admitted she was intrigued at the idea. The brain and the eyes worked in very different ways, and she had only an inkling of how a doujutsu user's eyes worked. So they began to study ways that chakra could be used to fool eyes, similar to the way that it fooled minds. It was slow going and hit many roadblocks, but it allowed the two friends to stay connected.

-9-

Despite the fact that things were going well for Naruto during the past few years, there were changes coming up that would shake these things apart. Naruto and his team were returning from a standard B-rank delivery mission when they found the watch at the front gate tripled and increased scrutiny required to enter or leave the village.

Raido, who had lived through the previous war, immediately went on edge and quickly led his team to the gate. "What happened?" He immediately asked the nearest chunin.

"Heightened security, I have to confirm your identities before letting you know." The chunin double checked their identities and their mission to confirm all of them had indeed been away on a verified mission. When they were all cleared, he answered the question. "The Uchiha clan has been wiped out."

"What!" Literally the entire team shouted this.

"Four days ago, we discovered the Uchiha clan, as in almost everyone, had been wiped out in a single night." The chunin declared again with more detail.

"Were there any survivors?" Kotetsu asked at the same time Raido was asking. "Who did it, are we at war?"

"As far as we can tell, it was done by a single member of their clan. Itachi Uchiha, age 13."

"Impossible!" Izumo said with the others echoing his shout. "Even if he was involved he couldn't wipe out the entire clan by himself!"

"It's true. He's fled the village and the Hokage declared him an S-ranked missing-nin."

The team was in shock from this news. The Uchiha clan wasn't the most liked clan in the village, especially due the the fact that they ran the military police and nobody really likes the police very much. But they still represented a significant portion of the villages ninja force and this was the worst blow to their village since the kyuubi attack.

"There was only one survivor." The chunin continued, aware of the reasons for their shock. "Itachi's younger brother Sasuke survived and is in the hospital now. He confirmed that Itachi killed his parents and the others."

The team made their way into Konoha, still processing the devastating news.

"I'm going to report our return and see if they need anything from us. Go to the training ground and wait for me there." Raido ordered as he took off to the administrative building.

Raido returned and told them the could have the day to themselves. Naruto made his way toward the Inuzuka compound, to make sure Hana was safe and to see if she had any more news. He made his way over the wall and saw Hana's little brother playing with his new puppy. "Hey, is Hana around?" Naruto asked.

"She's at the hospital" Little Kiba replied, before turning his attention back to his dog.

Naruto considered going to see her, but at least she was safe and not doing something crazy, like pursuing Konoha's newest missing-nin. In the end, he decided to go home and unpack from his mission.

-9-

A few days later, Izumo and Kotetsu made a decision that shook their team apart. With the disappearance of the Uchiha clan, a lot of new positions within the village opened up and the two decided that they would like to join village security.

"We like this team, don't get us wrong, but ever since Sakumo joined, we've been going at a much faster and harder pace than before." Izumo explained, being the more articulate of the two.

"Yeah, at first we could handle the increase, but instead of slowing down like we were supposed to, Sakumo seems to be thriving and getting even better than us." Kotetsu added.

Naruto, hearing this, was quite put out. Was he the reason they were leaving?

Izumo saw his face and interjected. "It's not you Sakumo, truthfully, we want to take it easy a bit. We've been running ourselves ragged for almost four years now and we need a break.

"Actually, we talked about that a bit." Kotetsu interrupted his friend. "In the last year, you've been advancing in skills pretty quickly. Every time you fight another ninja, you get more experience and use it to grow stronger. You've already surpassed both of us in taijutsu and when you bring out the ninjutsu or genjutsu, we can't even begin to match you. Heck, it's been almost a year since I've successfully broken one of your genjutsus!"

Izumo nodded along with what his friend was saying. "Actually, I would say that your probably good enough with genjutsu to get a promotion to tokubetsu jonin."

Naruto looked a bit shocked at this remark and turned to Raido to see his face was actually considering what they had said. "Raido, surely you don't..."

"I don't know Sakumo, you have grown quite a bit in the last few years." Raido seemed to be working things out in his head at the same time he was speaking. "With all the changes going on now, it might be time for you to go for it. And it seems like there are going to be major changes to our team. With two members gone, the brass might decide to give you your own team."

-9-

So here was Naruto, standing once more in front of the jonin commander, discussing a promotion to tokubetsu jonin. It had been a while since he had met with Shikaku-sama, not since he had left search and rescue. In fact, he hadn't even entered the administrative building since he had submitted the paperwork for joining the boiler team. Raido had always chosen and picked out their missions and briefed them about it in their training ground.

"So Sakumo, back again, it's been awhile." Shikaku said as he looked through his file. "Lots of B-rank missions to add to your record, one right after another. I don't think anyone from my clan has the endurance to last on one of these teams."

Naruto smiled at that, the Nara's laziness was well known, and not just in Konoha.

"You seem to be a bit surprised to be here yourself. Why is that?" Shikaku began.

Naruto nodded. "Well, after the massacre, two of my teammates decided to transfer into the village security forces. They explained that they were getting run ragged from the constant B-rank missions and constant training and needed a break. Before they left however, they advised me to try out for a promotion and Raido, our commander, agreed."

"What skill would they say you have that pushes you to the jonin level?" Shikaku asked.

"I would think that it would be my ninjutsu and genjutsu. Naruto decided. "I have completed many of the introductory elemental control exercises not just for my primary and secondary elements, but for all five elements. I have a pretty impressive repertoire of ninjutsu, that I have learned to use effectively in battle, thanks to the missions we have received with combat."

"You can use all five elements?" Shikaku asked, slightly stunned.

"To a degree." Naruto replied. "I've gotten the feel for all of them and I was able to make use of a lot of my free time with some of the more passive exercises."

"Could you elaborate on that?"

Naruto thought for a moment before coming up with an example. "For instance, one of the hardest elements to learn was wind. Because my primary element is fire, it naturally overrides my attempts to control it. The first exercise is usually to cut something delicate, like a leaf. I was able to practice this while traveling at low speeds or waiting for genin teams to rest while I was performing C-rank search and rescue missions. Obviously I stopped when performing the actual mission, but during travel time with the slow genin, it allowed me to multi-task and eventually learn the exercise."

As Naruto explained his training methods to the commander, he could see it was boosting his credibility. Shikaku-sama seemed very impressed with his commitment. He could also see a bit of exasperation, as if any Nara would even consider such training.

"And genjutsu?" he asked.

"I've always tried to consider genjutsu my first choice for combat. I've tried to use it in ways to catch a person off guard and I've recently been trying to refine it so that it will be more undetectable." Naruto explained.

"How do you make genjutsu more undetectable?" Shikaku asked, a bit curious himself.

"With the help of Hana, who is a medical-nin, I've been studying the brain and how we perceive illusions from reality. It's slow going and not as effective as I would have liked it to be, but I have noticed my teammates are more and more unable to break or even notice my genjutsus." Naruto elaborated.

Shikaku thought to himself, 'studying the brain to make genjutsu more effective... holy crap!' He considered the claim and if it was true, and he had no reason to doubt... or test... that it was, he should be more than qualified for a promotion to tokubetsu jonin.

"Okay, I will approve the promotion." He said after considering all the angles. "However I should warn you, you will have to meet with the Hokage to finalize the promotion."

"Meet with the Hokage?" Naruto said, startled by this fact.

"Yes, I can promote people to chunin on my own, but the Hokage is needed to finalize promotion to jonin. I will set up a time for the two of you to meet and write down my recommendation." Shikaku said, looking down at what he was writing and not seeing Naruto's expression.

'I guess it's time for him to know everything.' Naruto thought, as he knew he had little hope of fooling the Hokage with his disguise.

-9-

The sandaime sighed as he entered his tenth hour at the office today. He couldn't remember a time when he had worked less than ten hours a day but knew they had occurred somewhere near the beginning of his first term. Next up, final interview with a chunin for a promotion to tokubetsu jonin. He looked over the candidates mission record and found an impressive number of both B and C-rank missions as well as glowing recommendations from both his team commander, Raido Namiashi, and the jonin commander.

He heard a knock on the door, 'ah, that must be him now.' "Come in," he called. The person who entered however was a little short for someone applying for promotion to jonin, even tokubetsu jonin. He glanced down at the file and saw it... Sakumo Hayashi, age fourteen going on fifteen. He racked his brain, trying to remember a time in recent history that this boy had been promoted to chunin before looking down at the file again. Regular promotion to chunin given by the jonin commander four and a half years ago. 'Wait four and a half years ago? He would have only been ten at the time.' He checked the file yet again to discover in the earlier pages that he had graduated at age nine.

'Surely I would have remembered if someone graduated at age nine.' he thought to himself. He took a closer look at the chunin. He was dressed in typical chunin vest, pants with cargo pockets, sandals, a mask like Kakashi's. He looked deeper at the boy and noticed his eyes were quite an impressive shade of blue, wait... he knew that shade, it was familiar somehow.

It came to him at the moment the chunin opened his mouth and spoke his first words. "Hello Hokage-sama, remember me?"

'Naruto,' he said inside his head.

"Could we speak in private?" the Naruto asked.

The Hokage, mind still reeling at this event, paused.

The Anbu in the rafters and in the room adjacent, tensed at both the request and the Hokage's silence.

-9-

The Hokage needed a few moments to collect himself, but assured his Anbu guards that he was surprised, not endangered in any way. When they had privacy, they began their conversation in earnest.

"Naruto... when I found out you were a ninja I was incredibly surprised, but to find out that you were also a chunin at the time... it's just inconceivable!" The Hokage began, referencing 'Sakumo's' file for what felt like the hundredth time.

Naruto couldn't help but smirk. "Yep, not bad for a clan-less nobody, right?"

The Hokage, still in shock a bit, couldn't do anything but nod. "But how did you graduate so early? I should have known when constructing your team?"

"Well, first of all, I didn't apply for a genin team, I transferred directly into the genin reserve corp." Naruto began and could already see the Hokage questioning why. "As for no one finding out about me graduating early... well, nobody pays attention to a nine year old graduating early when a seven year old is graduating early right next to him."

'Seven year old?' The Hokage thought to himself. 'The only seven year old that graduated anytime recently was...' "Itachi!"

"Yep," Naruto said. "I didn't plan on him graduating along side me, but it didn't hurt when it came to hiding my graduation age."

"But still, why did you go the the reserve corp?" The Hokage still couldn't get over it.

"Well, although I had planned the graduate a bit early, I never thought I would be graduating that early." Naruto said, emphasizing the word 'that.' "And I guess I was still a little paranoid from my days living as Uzumaki Naruto that I felt I needed to hide a little. I originally planned to stay in the corp for only a year and then reapply to be on a genin team, but I got a promotion when I took over as the chunin on-call for search and rescue missions. Of course, when I did, I had to pay for the promotion by taking on two years of low ranking search and rescue missions, most of which were dreadfully boring and I had to be accompanied by a bunch of whiny genin."

Naruto continued when he saw the Hokage at least starting to understand. "When I met with you, I was in transition between search and rescue and joining a boiler team, where I am now."

The Hokage nodded, having read that portion of the file. "Any missions that I would have heard about?"

Naruto considered his question. "Not really. Almost all of them were standard missions. Hmm... the only one you might have heard about is when we were backing up Itachi Uchiha in Toyosato and found a note from someone trying to take attention away from the northern borders."

The Hokage nodded. "Yes, I remember that." The Hokage thought about the letter that they had found almost two years previously. There had been more scrutiny on the northern border, but neither Konoha nor the investigators of Fire Capitol had found anything substantial. He turned his thoughts back to the present. "So aside from missions, how have you been? Do you have friends? A girlfriend?"

Naruto thought about the questions, blushing slightly on the last. "I guess I have been pretty busy with missions, being on a boiler team is no joke. I would consider Raido, Kotetsu and Izumo friends, as well as a few members of the Inuzuka clan. There are a few other chunin I'm friendly with. I'm not sure what I want to do now that my boiler team is breaking up a bit, but I would like to spend more time with them, away from missions."

The Hokage nodded, remembering his own days as a chunin. "Any girlfriends?"

"No, I haven't really met that many girls being constantly on missions for the last couple years." Naruto said, trying to get away from the subject.

"Well I suppose we should get to it then. Your promotion request. I must say, I expected this day to come a lot later, and I thought I would be more engaged in your early ninja life. Have you ever even had to catch Tora?"

"Who's Tora?" Naruto asked, genuinely confused at this question.

"Ahh!" The Hokage sighed rather flamboyantly. "Catching Tora is a rite of passage for genin, one of our most dreaded D-ranks."

Naruto, thought about it but was still drawing a blank. "Nope, I got to choose my own missions when looking for D-ranks to do. I usually selected ones that could be done alone within a couple hours."

"Alright, well, I know which missions to give you when you become a jonin sensei then."

"Ha, I've dealt with enough whiny genin for one lifetime. You'll never catch me with a genin team." Naruto declared adamantly.

"Hahaha..." the Hokage bellowed with laughter, not telling him that he would make sure of it later. "Well, back to it then... which skill would you say qualifies you to be a tokubetsu jonin?"

"Probably my genjutsu and ninjutsu. As I told Nara-sama, I have mastered many of the introductory chakra exercises for all five of the elements and can use all of them in combat, at least on a basic level. Obviously my primary and secondary elements are better trained, Fire and Earth, if you were wondering. I've made pretty good use of the chunin library and have learned almost all of the jutsus they had, although when it come to missions, I usually have favorites that I use more frequently."

The Hokage nodded along, a bit surprised at his dedication to master the basic exercises for all the elements. It was similar to the training he had done when he was Naruto's age. "Why genjutsu? I must say, based on the control requirements for genjutsu, I didn't expect you to favor it."

"I typically use genjutsu to enhance my taijutsu skills. Using them together allows me to double my taijutsu skill, while keeping the genjutsu unnoticed, due to the fact that I only use it for a second or so at a time."

"And how is your taijutsu on it's own?" The Hokage asked.

"Well, it's not quite jonin level yet, but it has been growing stronger in the last couple years. The boiler team I joined uses taijutsu as their primary skill, so I was able to both learn from them quite a bit and cover their weaknesses with my ninjutsu and genjutsu."

"Hmm..." The Hokage hummed, thinking about the situation. "I must confess I find myself quite curious. It isn't unusual for me to test out jonin before receiving promotions, so that is one of the requirements I insist upon. Tomorrow, I want you to meet me in my private training field at..." The Hokage briefly checked his private schedule, "... 1 pm. You can ask my secretary for the location on your way out. I must say, I'm eager to see what you can do, Naruto." 'Who knows, maybe I can get rid of this desk job in a few years!' The Hokage thought to himself as Naruto bowed and exited the room.

-9-

Naruto made sure it arrive at the Hokage's private training ground plenty early so that he could stretch and prepare to make the best impression possible. He had spent the previous night reviewing his ninjutsu arsenal and considering his tactics. He was able to spot a single anbu, most likely a scout to prepare for the Hokage's arrival, but otherwise the training ground was empty. Naruto nodded to the anbu and began to stretch for his test.

The Hokage arrived an hour and a half later at around 1:30 pm. While his test had been set to happen at 1 pm, the Hokage was a busy man and even he could not always predict his own schedule.

"Hayashi-san, I hope you are ready for your tokubetsu jonin examination." The Hokage began.

Naruto smiled internally at the usage of his cover name. "Yes, Hokage-sama."

"Your examiner will be Hatake Kakashi, who will be testing you in ninjutsu and genjutsu. Fortunately for both of us, we collected him on our way here." The Hokage smirked to himself remembering just a few minutes ago, when they decided to check the memorial stone to make sure he would be on time. "Why don't we start with genjutsu. You will attempt to either trap Kakashi in a genjutsu or land physical strikes on him by distracting him with genjutsu."

Both Naruto and Kakashi nodded to the Hokage, getting ready for the action to begin.

Naruto decided to start things off with a standard B-rank hell viewing technique as he ran toward his opponent. He did this so that Kakashi would be more likely to be caught off guard with his more subtle genjutsu's as he got closer. As expected, the elite jonin was able to dispel the jutsu before he could move in more than half way. Naruto used hand seals to throw another B-rank genjutsu at him in order to close more distance. Again, Kakashi was able to throw it off with little effort, only this time, Naruto added a tiny genjutsu immediately after Kakashi dispelled his first to give the appearance of his right fist about to strike his head.

Kakashi dodged to his left in a caviler fashion only to feel a fist strike his stomach. As he glanced down, he saw his opponents right fist retreating from his stomach. 'Wait, that isn't right, that fist should have just sailed by the right side of my head.' Kakashi thought to himself.

Naruto retreated from his strike and backed away from Kakashi only to begin yet another overt genjutsu. He decided to keep his opponent guessing for a while longer with his subtle genjutsu's.

As Naruto was finishing his hand seals, Kakashi was preparing to dispel yet another genjutsu. So far, his opponent was pretty fast at throwing out genjutsus, for a chunin, but he wasn't quite jonin level yet. Kakashi observed his vision changing to see his opponent disappear before dispelling it yet again to see him approaching with a wild haymaker. Kakashi made to grab his arm and toss him aside, when he misjudged the distance between the two, leaving his arm exposed to a strike from Hayashi.

Kakashi pulled back at this. One mistake he could ignore, but two was something he could not. Something fishy was going on here, and he was going to find out what. He wrestled with his decision, but in the end pulled up his hitai-ate to reveal his implanted sharingan.

-9-

The Hokage watched from the sidelines with his anbu guard. The beginning of the fight had gone as he visualized it, Naruto attacked with genjutsu only for Kakashi to dispel it almost immediately. He waited for Kakashi to avoid the first hit easily in order to show Naruto that this would not be easy, only for him to get hit by what seemed like an easy punch to avoid.

Hiruzen blinked as he wondered what was going on. He recalled his discussion yesterday with Naruto had been more focused on ninjutsu, but didn't Naruto say something about using genjutsu to augment his taijutsu.

He watched the next exchange, paying attention to any change in Naruto's behavior. When Kakashi was about to dispel the genjutsu Naruto had placed on him, he felt Naruto pulse his chakra slightly to activate a second genjutsu. He immediately looked over to Kakashi, who had finished dispelling the first genjutsu, but seemed totally unaware of the second. He was able to witness Kakashi prepare to deal with Naruto's over-exaggerated haymaker only to start and finish his counterattack too early. Naruto had taken advantage of that earliness to strike Kakashi's elbow joint.

'So that's what he's doing... interesting.' The Hokage thought wryly. Naruto was being tricky. Using overt genjutsu's to hide his subtle one's. If the sandaime had to guess, he would say that the seal-less genjutsu Naruto had performed was so simple that it only slightly modified Kakashi's perception. 'It's no wonder Kakashi hasn't noticed it yet. If Naruto hadn't forewarned me, I might not have caught it.'

The Anbu to the sandaime's left and right were briefly surprised by him revealing his sharingan, but the sandaime only raised an eyebrow. 'What will you do now Naruto?'

-9-

When Kakashi revealed his implanted sharingan, no one was more surprised than Naruto. He had thought that the jonin was blind in that eye, not that it had a sharingan! Naruto calmed himself down immediately. He had prepared for this, the day that his genjutsu's would be put to the test against a doujutsu user.

Over the past two years, Naruto had theorized many ways to beat the sharingan, although only a few of them actually panned out to anything more than speculation or imagination. He decided in this instance to go with one that was more likely to work, auditory genjutsu.

Eyes work primary by observing different changes of light that are then interpreted directly into the primary visual cortex. The primary visual cortex then sorts the light into shape, color, movement, and chakra. The dojutsu acts as a shortcut and an enhancement to this brain function, but one of the easiest ways to fool it would logically use a genjutsu that wasn't visually based.

Most auditory genjutsu's rely upon an instrument to weave complicated illusions, but Naruto wasn't after these types, he was only looking to fool. To this end Naruto added a little theater to explain away his next action.

"Sharingan! How did you get one of those? Wow, I feel like I'm in a movie fighting a villain who just revealed his secret weapon. At this point I would expect to hear some inspirational music while I counter your evil weapon!" At this, Naruto played along with the nonsense he was saying by humming out some danger music.

Kakashi sweatdropped at the things he was hearing and when he started hearing the humming, just looked embarrassed to be there and to be compared to the villain. He saw Hayashi approaching with yet another genjutsu only to use the sharingan to immediately dispel it. He saw his opponent jump into a flying kick and decided to just duck under it for now. He was completely unprepared for the kick Naruto seemed to punt him with from the front, striking him right in the chin he was currently lowering.

Kakashi was sent sailing, only to recover right as he was about to collapse on the ground. He blinked both eyes at missing that kick and wondered just what the fuck was going on.

"Stop."

Both looked over to the Hokage, who had stopped the fight. Before relaxing and making their way over to him.

Everyone was looking quite strangely at Naruto not only for his recent words, but for being able to hit Kakashi three times in a row, the last one with a sharingan to defend against.

"I believed that you were using sealless and very subtle genjutsu's to fool Kakashi immediately after using an overt genjutsu as a distraction, but if that was the case, you should have never been able to kick Kakashi that last time. How did you do that?" The Hokage explained his reasoning, but remained clueless as to the last bit.

Kakashi, who had heard the first bit, remembered that this was suppose to be a genjutsu test and wondered why his sharingan wasn't able to detect any, if that was the case.

"Actually," Naruto began, "that is how I struck him the first two times, but when he pulled out the sharingan, I knew I needed a different strategy."

Both the Hokage and Kakashi (as well as some of the anbu) leaned their head forward to hear what this was.

"Auditory genjutsu." Naruto said, eventually. He would have preferred to keep this a secret, but since it was the Hokage asking and it was a test, he decided he probably needed to reveal it. "Bypasses the visual cortex that the sharingan connects to."

"Auditory? But wouldn't that require a medium?" The Hokage drew upon his decades of experience to quickly analyze the fight. "Wait!... oh... Hahahaaaa!" The Hokage started bellowing out his laughter much to the surprise of the others.

When the Hokage had settled down a bit, Kakashi asked what he was laughing at.

"The humming. N-Sakumo said all that stuff and started humming to hide the auditory genjutsu." The Hokage almost slipped up his name, but was able to fake it as an aftereffect of the laughter. "Well, I would say that qualifies Hayashi-san to advance based on his genjutsu skills. Wouldn't you?"

Kakashi, after thinking about it, agreed to his analysis.

"Alright then, I would say that would qualify you for a promotion to tokubetsu jonin, but let's see your ninjutsu anyway to confirm." The Hokage moved the group along to the second portion of the test. "This time, fight only with ninjutsu, no weapons, taijutsu or genjutsu. Kakashi, please cover your sharingan, you may uncover it again if you feel it necessary."

The two broke apart and waited for the starting signal from the Hokage. A few seconds later, they received it and began.

This time, Kakashi was a bit more eager to attack and cover his embarrassment from the last few exchanges, immediately began the hand seals for a water attack. By now, he had remembered Hayashi-san from his previous encounters and knew to expect both shadow clones and fire jutsu's, hence he would be starting out with water. He launched a Water Release: Gunshot at him and quickly recognized the earth wall his opponent had brought out.

Not wanting to give any more time for any more surprises, the jonin quickly brought out an earth dragon to tear down the wall and disrupt any plans. If his opponent was anywhere near as tricky with ninjutsu as he was with genjutsu, he would need to remain on guard and not underestimate him. As the dust settled, he saw no trace of his opponent, but due to experience, he was able to sense his opponent underground and getting closer. Kakashi quickly leaped back, landing on a small lake and avoiding any offensive action.

Unexpectedly, the ground did not burst up with a newly revealed Sakumo Hayashi waiting to grab him where he had previously stood or mount an attack from that angle. Instead, Kakashi could feel a slow build up of chakra, but had no idea what was going on underground.

-9-

Naruto, or rather a few of Naruto's clones, waited underground for the signal to launch their attack. They had slowly been using their fire manipulation to heat up the rocks between them to use as a base in which to launch a modified earth-magma dragon back at their opponent. They received the signal from a shadow clone that had just dispelled, revealing the location of their opponent. Time to show these guys what he could do!

-9-

Everyone at different reactions from seeing a magma-induced earth dragon rise from the ground. The Hokage smoked his newly lit pipe, impressed at Naruto's creativity. The anbu fortified their position around the Hokage, just in case. Kakashi, just looked at the dragon, slightly backing further into the lake wondering if there was enough water to protect him from that.

Kakashi quickly looked around for safe options on where to jump to if need be. Obviously, the safest choice would be to retreat into the forest, where the earth-magma dragon could not follow him. Unfortunately, the lake was the edge of the training ground and while his rank was not in danger, retreating would embarrass him even further today. He could go under water, but the earth-magma dragon had so much mass that it would probably be a bad idea. In the end he decided to go either left, to a muddy area, probably not a good idea, or right, to a grassy area with a few trees to use for cover, better.

As the earth-magma dragon neared, Kakashi waited until the proper time to make his jump. Not too early to give his opponent time to change the dragon's course, but not too late as to get damaged by it. When the dragon looked to be beyond the point of no return, Kakashi made his jump, only to be pushed back to his starting position by a sudden burst of wind. 'A wind jutsu,' he thought furiously. Not enough to injure him in any way, but enough to keep him from escaping to the right. In a split second, he chose his alternate landing site, the muddy area. Kakashi pumped chakra into his legs, to prepare to power through another wind jutsu if need be. He barely made it away in time to avoid getting hit by the dragon, but this time there was no wind jutsu to stop him.

As Kakashi was in the air approaching his landing site upon the ground, he could feel a sudden change in the earth below him. Unfortunately, there was no time to change his flight path, so he would just have to deal with it when he landed. When he touched down, he immediately made plans to shunshin away, but instead he sunk further into the mud than he thought. He could feel as soon as he landed that the mud started to move in a forward direction toward a rather large tree. 'An Earth Flow River aiming for a tree, this damned kid thought this out.'

He went ahead with his plan to shunshin out, but had to bring a tremendous amount of mud with him, which not only reduced the distance of the shunshin, but increased the chakra cost. 'Great, not only did I waste a lot of chakra escaping, but now I'm covered in mud, which is going to slow me down.'

Kakashi wished he could locate where the kid was so he could go on the offensive, but had no clue. He was practically waiting for young chunin's next series of attacks. 'Might as well,' Kakashi sighed dejectedly at the second time this kid was going to make him do this. He pulled up his headband to once again reveal his sharingan.

In the background, he could just barely hear a sound he was well familiar with. The sound of a shadow clone dispelling. 'And now the kid knows,' Kakashi grumbled in his head.

-9-

The real Naruto remained crouched in his position behind a group of bushes. He had been the one to aim the Wind Release: Great Breakthrough (Daitoppa) at Kakashi, since his clones weren't strong enough to execute one. 'Sharingan already huh?' Naruto thought things through. 'Well, at least now I can test one of my other dojutsu strategies.'

Naruto had been reasonable sure that auditory genjutsu would work, he was less sure about this one, but wanted to give it a try against an opponent that wouldn't kill him if he was wrong. This particular strategy had involved a partial subset of lightning jutsu called light jutsu. The purpose of this was to use the dojutsu's sensitivity to light against it by trying to overload it. This jutsu, which Naruto had developed almost completely by himself, released a short burst of light that could at best be called a useless flare. If used against a normal person, it might make them blink a bit, but he hoped that against the byakugan and to a lesser extent, the sharingan, it would be more effective. Unfortunately, he had to be quite close for it to work.

'Well, I can't hide forever. And if he revealed his sharingan, it's a good sign that I've probably passed already.' Naruto thought, before he moved to Kakashi's position at the same time a couple other clones.

-9-

Kakashi saw movement out of his sharingan eye from multiple direction. After a brief count, he saw three bodies moving toward him. 'Either three clones or two clones and my real opponent.'

Kakashi sped through a brief collection of handseals in order to produce a series of phoenix sage fireballs in hopes of revealing the true Hayashi. The fireballs only managed to hit one of the clones, dispelling it, but it reducing the number of bodies approaching him. As soon as they were in range, both of the remaining bodies began a short series of handseals. Kakashi's sharingan helped him eliminate everything in his internal ninjutsu library while memorizing the new jutsu, before realizing what it did.

Kakashi saw a brief ball of light produced before receiving a pain in his sharingan the likes of which he had not felt before. He was quickly force to retreat and cover his sharingan in order to stop the pain, but it still lingered even after he had covered it. Kakashi was perhaps the worst person to use this on, as he only had one eye that contained a doujutsu and was only half way effective, but it still took his advantage and turned it into a weakness.

Kakashi wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew he couldn't stay to see what came next. Only his experience allowed him to deal with the pain that still existed within both his sharingan and his brain, to flee from the situation he was in. Unfortunately, the only direction he had to run to was the direction he had just come from. He once again fell victim to sinking into an Earth Flow River that once again tried to slam him into a tree. Only this time, he failed to escape in time.

-9-

At this point, the Hokage once again called a halt to the examination. Seeing that Kakashi was a little worst for wear, he ordered one of his anbu to summon a medical nin to patch Kakashi up from that recent run-in with a tree. He motioned for Naruto to join him while he sat on a bench near the edge of the training ground.

The Hokage accepted a cup of tea from one of his anbu and relaxed at this reprieve from his paperwork. "Well, I must say, I'm impressed." The Hokage began, a bit disappointed he couldn't call the boy by his name due to the presence of his anbu. "First of all, you were able to pull out some dangerous jutsu, and second because you were able to use them in a good strategy and not just fling it around hoping it will hit. How did you manage to pull off those mudslides with so little preparation?"

"I used the Earth Release: Underground Move jutsu to scatter shadow clones around the muddy area. I wasn't sure where he would choose to land, so I had to use a few more than I would have liked." Naruto explained his battle strategy.

"When did you learn the shadow clone?"

"Back when I was in search and rescue." Naruto replied. "I petitioned Shikaku-sama to be taught the jutsu in order to be more effective in searching for missing people. Because of my circumstances, I am able to use it far better than anyone realizes, but I've mostly kept that hidden. Unfortunately, Shikaku-sama assigned Kakashi to teach it to me, so he was completely prepared for it."

The Hokage nodded, understanding both what he was saying and his reasoning. "By the way, what was that last jutsu you used that seemed to cause Kakashi so much grief? It seemed like a flash of light, but seemed to be particularly effective."

Naruto smirked. "That is another strategy I developed while researching effective strategies for dealing with dojutsu users. Since their eyes are so sensitive to chakra, I released a ball of chakra designed to overload their dojutsu. I figured it would be more effective against the byakugan, but wanted to see if it would still work against a sharingan user."

The Hokage sat stunned for a moment. 'Two different and effective strategies for dealing with the sharingan, when most people think it's invincible, amazing!' "Well, I'd say you have proven your mettle as someone worthy of the title of tokubetsu jonin. In fact, I'd say you might be able to just become a full jonin if you demonstrated a bit more taijutsu skill and had a few more recommendations."

Naruto grinned at that remark, suspecting he had a bit more training to go through before managing that particular feat.

"Well, tomorrow you will officially be a tokubetsu jonin. Any idea on what you would like to do at that point?" The Hokage continued after Naruto had not spoken.

"I guess I'm not sure. I don't think I want to be a permanent leader again quite so soon, so I guess either apply for a higher ranking team or join one of the Konoha departments for a while." Naruto said, for the first time not knowing what lay ahead in his future.

"Well, why don't you take a few days to think about it. The village needs manpower more than ever right now, so please put some thought into it. If you can't think of anything, I will assign you to whatever department needs the most assistance." The Hokage said, starting off kindly and ending a bit sternly.

-9-

Naruto spent the next week racking his brain trying to think of where he wanted to take his ninja career from here, but couldn't come up with anything. He had run through a majority of the departments within Konoha but didn't feel like any of them were really right for him. He wasn't ready to join Anbu and wasn't sure he would ever want to. He definitely wasn't going to join the academy, become a medical-nin, or become part of the administration. He briefly considered joining his comrades in village security or border patrol, but wanted something a bit more stimulating. The only things he came up with that he might have an interest in were military police, intelligence, and counterintelligence. With military police he was still on the young side and wouldn't be taken seriously, nor would he be well liked, a problem for when he removed his mask. He wasn't sure what intelligence and counterintelligence would entail for everyday life, but he could learn by doing.

In the end he decided to return to the Hokage to see what he thought. Perhaps he could come up with an idea that better suited him.

The Hokage was quite amused as his predicament. He thought briefly of the departments that needed replacements, but could agree that they needed primarily older or more seasoned ninja for the jonin level positions. He turned his attention to the active ninja roster and looked for a team with an opening in which Naruto could fit well into. In the end, he noticed one particular jonin team, led by a famed Konoha jonin, that always seemed to be in need of replacements. He smirked to himself, imagining it would let Naruto experience higher ranked missions while slightly punishing him for not making up his mind.

-9-

Naruto approached the training ground, ready to meet his new team. He felt quite apprehensive about this, as he was jumping onto a jonin team with no knowledge of their skills or specialties. According to the Hokage, this team of usually three or four jonin took primarily A-rank missions with the occasional B-rank or assisting of other departments.

As Naruto neared the training ground he could hear shouting from a distance. As he got closer, he could make out the words. "COME MEN, LET US TRAIN WITH THE POWER OF YOUTH."

'Power of Youth? What was the Hokage getting him into?' Naruto thought, as a feeling of foreboding overtook him.

-9-

AN: Gee, I wonder who he's about to meet?

I really had a tough decision on where to take him at the end there. There was a bit of a break in my story outline where I had trouble deciding what to do next. Expect a couple more time skips in the future.

Naruto and Hana haven't interacted much in the romantic sense, but that will likely change around chapter 11. Although I am a big fan of NarutoxOlderGirls, I'm not a huge fan of it happening before Naruto even enters his teenage years. I'm hoping a bit of a break between them will make for an easier transition from 'little brother sakumo-chan' to 'handsome and strong older teenager Sakumo/Naruto.'


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

As expected, Naruto was cursing the old man for quite a while after he met Gai for the first time.

Naruto resolved himself to stick it out for at least a year, as long as he wasn't rubbing off on him too much. On the other hand, Gai's skill in taijutsu was almost unparalleled. If Naruto thought his previous team was devoted to taijutsu, he now knew they were amateurs compared to Gai.

Another thing that made it at least somewhat bearable was his rise among the team roster. It seems that due to Gai's... unique personality, jonin transferring on and off his team happened quite frequently. After only a few months, Naruto became the most senior member of the team, aside from Gai, just from the fact that he had been able to stick with it.

As it was, Naruto was going on a great many A-rank missions with his new team. One thing he noticed however was the lack missions that required clients to spend long periods of time with his team. It was almost as if the leadership was trying to keep their stable clients away from some distinctive personality.

Naruto had been running missions with Gai for almost a year now. Currently, they were on an A-rank mission, just the two of them, due to... (well, you know why).

The intelligence department had assigned them a mission to extract one of their agents from Kiri, who had come under increased scrutiny. They were to enter the village of Kiri and alert the agent that his cover was in serious danger and he needed to leave now. Fortunately, because they were going in under cover, Gai needed to change out of his hideous jumpsuit and act as normally as possible while they were in Water country.

Due to the civil war, which was currently ravaging Water country, security was heightened, so that had to be careful getting in. However, since it was permanently heightened with no breaks and most of the more skilled manpower being in the field, they had an easier time getting in than if it had only been temporarily heightened.

After quickly getting their bearings, they located the address of the spy they had in Kiri. Naruto sent in a shadow clone to make sure the coast was clear for them to enter, although the spy wasn't home at the moment. Since it was an enemy village and they didn't have anywhere else to go, they decided to simply rent a room at one of the local inns. After all, a pair of travelers renting a room for the night was a lot less conspicuous than a pair of unknowns hanging around the apartment of a man they were investigating as a spy.

Once it had gotten dark, Naruto had sent another shadow clone to the apartment to try and intercept the man. However, once it had been dispelled, both Naruto and Gai were loathed to discover a team of ninja searching the apartment and interrogating the neighbors for information.

At this point, Gai and Naruto were left with a decision to make. Should they stick around and try to extract their agent or leave and get out of the village before they themselves were captured. In the end, Gai ordered Naruto to spy on the team of investigators with a henged clone to discover if they could lead them to their agent. If not, they would bail out.

It was a complicated situation they were in now. Military villages usually preferred to avoid entangling with each other, for fear of starting new wars, but active intelligence gathering was something they all performed. If this were any other major military village, they would have bailed out almost immediately and left the unfortunate agent to his fate. But, since this particular village was in the midst of a civil war, they might be able to extract their agent and lay the blame on the other side.

Nevertheless, both Naruto and Gai remained on alert and prepared for one action or another. When Naruto's clone dispelled, they would be ready either way. After an hour of pacing the room, checking their weapons, or mumbling about youth, the clone dispelled.

Naruto actively reviewed the memories in his head while Gai waited for a determination. His clone was able to follow two of the investigators to a nondescript building, where one had entered and the other seemed to go off duty. Naruto then informed Gai of what he had learned.

"The building isn't too big, but I have no idea what the inside looks like, or if that's where they're hiding him." Naruto concluded as he told his commander about what his clone had observed.

Gai made his serious face, weighing his options. On one side, Naruto liked this face of Gai over the others, since it made Gai seem almost normal, on the other, it usually only occurred when they were in a dangerous situation.

When Gai started looking at him with an evaluating expression, Naruto decided to let him know where he stood. "I'm in if you are."

Gai smirked slightly before deciding. "Let's go get our comrade."

-10-

Naruto approached the nondescript building from the east side with a clone next to him. Both of them were henged to look like Kiri chunin in outfits similar to what he had seen from the men investigating the apartment. Naruto himself was impersonating the chunin who had left to apparently go off duty. Naruto and his clone would enter first, using genjutsu to hide while trying to locate their comrade. If they found his location, Gai and one of his clones would enter and execute a break out with whatever plan they could come up with.

Naruto entered the building, trying to tone down his nervousness as much as possible. To his eternal relief, there was no one in the 'lobby' of the building. Naruto and his clone split apart, his clone taking the upstairs, leaving the original to explore the ground level. Naruto explored the area quickly but quietly, listening for any sign of someone being interrogated.

He poked his head into some of the rooms, but found them to mostly contain storage area's for documents. Eventually, he discovered a set of stairs leading down. Reluctant as he was to enter a basement or worse, an underground network of tunnels, he decided to at least scout out the initial area of the level underground.

As he lowered himself carefully down the stairs and approached the door at the end of the stairs, he noted that it was made of a much stronger material than the other doors. He pressed his ear against the door to listen for signs of interrogation when he heard a scream. He debated opening the door, but decided it was better to include Gai on this step. He retreated back to the ground floor, entered one of the empty rooms, made a clone and dispelled it, signaling Gai to enter.

Less than a minute later, Gai joined him in the form of a random Kiri chunin he had shown him previously so he wouldn't freak out when he saw him. Naruto would be entering first, prepared to perform a genjutsu to hide them. If they saw their comrade, they would get him out, if not, they would scrap the mission and retreat back to Konoha.

Naruto entered the room as quietly as possible, while not appearing to be sneaking in. He immediately took note of two ninja, who were standing behind what looked like one way glass. He looked deeper into the room to see a Kiri ninja interrogating a man. Naruto was able to recognize him as the Konoha spy from a picture he was shown before leaving Konoha.

Naruto weaved a genjutsu as fast and as subtly as he could to remain unnoticed by the two ninja observing the interrogation. Fortunately, the screams of the interrogation helped silence him enough to apply the genjutsu and allow Gai to enter as well.

Naruto nodded toward Gai, while moving to stand behind the man standing to the left. Gai moved into position to the man to the right and counted down with his fingers while motioning with a kunai. Naruto understood this to mean kill, not subdue and pulled out a kunai of his own. When it was time, both of them stabbed their kunai into the necks of the men observing while placing their hands on their mouths. Both of the ninja observing struggled, but made no sounds and soon fell to the ground, dead.

Naruto then henged himself and a shadow clone into duplicates of the observers, while motioning Gai to stand behind the door leading in. Naruto then knocked on the glass twice, in order to hopefully summon the interrogator away from his prisoner. The interrogator looked confused, but returned inside the room to check it out. Gai killed him before he was halfway inside.

While Gai was lowering the body onto the floor, Naruto made his way into the room and quickly began the process of freeing his comrade.

"What...?" the man started, confused at the change to his situation.

"We're here to extract you." Naruto said. "Sorry, we got here a few hours too late."

The man seemed to be deciding whether or not this was some elaborate trick, but in the end just decided to go with it.

"Can you move?" Gai asked, as he entered the room.

"I think so... maybe... I seem to be a little confused, they seemed to focus on my head." The man said, words a bit slurred.

Naruto took a second look at his head and noticed that under the patches of hair, there seemed to be extensive burns. Naruto unsealed some of his medical supplies from his scroll and began applying some burn ointment and bandages.

"We have to go, before anyone shows up." Gai said, hurrying Naruto up.

Naruto finished patching him up as best he could, but knew they needed to get him back to Konoha as fast as possible. When he was done, Gai picked him up and started to leave. Naruto took one last look around and decided to create a shadow clone to hide the bodies in the interrogation room below the mirror and clean up the room a bit.

He made his way back to the 'lobby' where Gai was waiting, probably deciding how they were going to get out of here with an injured man.

"Alright, I don't think we can exit subtly, so we're going to have to go for speed. Sakumo, this is what a Kiri Anbu looks like." Gai henged into a black cloaked Anbu, similar to Konoha's, but with a few differences in the armor beneath. Naruto examined him carefully before duplicating the effect. Gai examined him before nodding in approval. "Good, now make two more shadow clones and we will look like an Anbu team carrying a prisoner. Unfortunately, we'll be going in the wrong direction, so we'll try to avoid ninja where we can, but we need to be out of Kiri as fast as possible."

Naruto nodded, knowing that this was probably going to be the most dangerous situation he had ever been in. Gai took a deep breath, before opening the door and exiting.

Naruto and Gai roof hopped north, trying to avoid anything that looked like it might contain concentrations of enemy ninja. So far they hadn't been observed by anyone too closely, probably due to the fear Kiri ninja had instilled into their lower classes and ranks, but knew it would be a different story at the edge of the village. They successfully made it to the northern wall of the village without knowingly alerting anyone of their true nature, and were currently observing the wall for a weakness. In the end, they decided to go straight through a chunin who was diligently overlooking the outer side of the wall. Naruto landed behind him, again killing him instantly before dumping his body over the edge into some mist. Gai made his way over with his clones as soon as Naruto had made the kill.

Again, Naruto left behind a shadow clone to take the place of the chunin he had killed. It wouldn't hold up to scrutiny, since he never truly saw the chunin's face, but he hoped it would be ignored. He quickly caught up to Gai as they made their way to one of the port towns, to buy passage to the mainland.

About fifteen minutes later, when they were beginning to feel some semblance of relief, Naruto almost missed a step as he felt his clone dispel himself. Apparently, the chunin guard's superior passed by and noticed the flaws in Naruto's henge. The clone tried to dispel out of sight of the jonin, but was unsuccessful. He alerted Gai that they were probably on to them and noted that Gai used this as an excuse to pick up their speed.

The two of them kept running throughout the night, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the village as possible. By morning, they were expecting to make it to one of the port cities to the north-west and buy passage back to either Fire, Wave, or Hot Springs.

They arrived in one of the bigger port cities in the early morning, directly approaching the docks to find a ship that would get them out. Naruto immediately made a dozen shadow clones to look for passage out of Water Country. An hour later, one of his clones dispelled, signaling he had found a boat leaving for Wave country in an hour and it had a cabin for rent. The small group made their way over to the boat and quickly bartered passage. Less than an hour later, the boat was on it's way west, toward Wave.

-10-

A day later, both Naruto and Gai had recovered from their escape from Water Country and were sitting on the rim of the boat. It wasn't the largest ship out their or the fastest, but it got them out of there and was headed in the proper direction. Their injured comrade finally had a chance to rest properly and treat his burns a little better, but they still needed to get him to the Konoha hospital as fast as possible.

They had properly introduced themselves as well. Apparently he had heard of the infamous Gai Maito, but not 'Sakumo Hayashi.' He introduced himself as Ibiki Morino, chunin of the intelligence department.

Halfway through the second day, Gai brought his attention to a boat in the horizon that seemed to be trailing them. It could be a coincidence or it could be pursuers catching up with them. Either way, Naruto and Gai prepared for a fight, while Ibiki was given some of their spare weapons to defend himself.

As the ship got closer, Gai was able to identify it as a ship belonging to the Water Country Navy, further cementing their fears. They all knew that the ship would probably be carrying at least a couple squads of ninja, ready to avenge their comrades.

As soon as the ship was near enough, Naruto, Gai, and a couple dozen of his shadow clones charged the ship, hoping to grab whatever element of surprise they could. The Kiri ninja on the ship were a bit shocked at first, but recovered well before any of them made it to the ship. Unfortunately, there were twelve ninja on the surface of the ship in addition to the crew and an unknown number below deck.

Gai was a raging force, using the celestial gates to quickly subdue half the enemy force, before running out of steam. Naruto used genjutsu and quick movements to quickly kill three enemies before they caught on to what he was doing. As an exhausted Gai and Naruto were dealing with the last three men, an extra squad of four came up from below deck.

Gai was holding his own, somewhat used to missions like this thanks to the previous war, but Naruto was barely hanging in there. When a shuriken pierced his back, Naruto stumbled, but kept fighting. Unfortunately, due to this injury he was unable to see a water dragon take him out from the side of the ship, throwing him overboard, into the ocean.

-10-

Naruto awoke in an unfamiliar setting, in a dark hallway of twisting pipes and shallow water. He wondered if this was the afterlife, or if he had been captured and they were using some sort of mind torture on him.

He wandered around before reaching a doorway with what felt like a massive amount of chakra on the other side. Inside was a massive cage, bound only by a single piece of paper with the word 'seal' on it. Inside, was the being that had haunted Naruto's dreams since the moment he had found out the truth, The Kyuubi.

Naruto suppressed his panic and fear over being in the presence of such an evil being before remembering his comrade was still fighting for his life. He took a closer look at the Kyuubi, observing the room more carefully. The beast seemed to be slumbering deeply and wasn't aware of his presence. Naruto examined the pipes in the room, reminded of the conversation he had had with the sandaime so long ago, thinking these could be the means for which the Kyuubi's energy would enter him.

Thinking again of his teammate, Naruto approached the cage, looking for a way to augment that energy, temporarily at least, to get him out of this situation. As he placed his hands on one of the larger pipes exiting the cage, he felt an energy within, powerful, but not unfamiliar responding to his touch. He concentrated, hoping against hope that this would do something.

The pipe, elongated deeper into the cage and increased the amount of energy carried forth somewhat. Naruto knew that this would not be enough and not knowing how much time he had left, decided to go for broke. He placed his hands once more on the pipe and called for as much energy as he could take. Immediately, he could feel a raw power overtake him, seeming to surround and take hold of him. He felt like he was losing consciousness again, hoping that he would awaken in the real world.

-10-

Gai continued fighting, struggling against the overwhelming odds. He had just witnessed his teammate for almost a year forced overboard, if he didn't finish the fight soon, he was as good as dead. Unfortunately, the fight was no where near ending and he had already used the eight gates taking out a bulk of them in the initial battle. Gai sighed internally, while keeping himself focused on the battle.

All of the sudden, he felt a presence. A presence that stopped the battle cold. To the Kiri ninja, it was an overwhelming energy that they had never experienced before. But to Gai, it was a reminder of one of the worst days of his life.

Out of the water, Sakumo came rushing out in a blur of speed that even Gai struggled to keep track of. Sakumo was surrounded by a visible orange chakra that exuded pure malevolence. As soon as he touched down on to the ship, he immediately impaled his fists into two Kiri ninja, who were still shocked by his appearance. The two died almost instantly, spilling their blood across the deck of the ship. The other Kiri ninja stood in absolute horror, only now regaining their senses enough to watch out for a second strike.

Gai tried to ignore the thoughts that were pressuring his mind. Thoughts of 'how is he doing this' and 'there is only one person who should be able to do that' were forcefully suppressed in order to keep his attention on the more immediate situation. He defended against the Kiri ninja, who were now splitting their forces into two for him and three for Sakumo.

Now that he had less forces to deal with, he used his massively superior taijutsu to quickly overwhelm his opponents. He was able to land a powerful kick to one of the ninja's neck, ending with a sickening crunch as the man's neck snapped, further diminishing the forces he was facing down to one. The sole remaining Kiri ninja looked for backup in the form of his comrades facing the demonized Konoha ninja, but was horrified to find that they were down to one as well. In that moment, Gai landed a powerful strike into his stomach followed by an elbow that cracked his skull, dropping him.

At the same moment, Sakumo was finishing off his last opponent with less than fluid taijutsu that was more barbaric but nonetheless effective. The two Konoha ninja's eyes met for the first time since his revival. Gai looked into the familiar red slitted eyes that reminded him so much of that fateful night. Before he could articulate any of the word he was feeling, Sakumo let out a coarse "later."

Gai nodded, somewhat thankful that Sakumo was able to communicate and distinguish between enemy and ally. Gai took a look around, better analyzing their environment. The crew had retreated to the lower levels of the ship and there was no sign of any more Kiri ninja. Their own ship was now further away, but still within sight. Sakumo still had visible orange chakra surrounding him, but it had seemed to die down just a little bit with the eradication of their enemies.

He made some internal decisions in his head while trying to remain as calm and focused as possible. He couldn't allow this ship to return to Water Country to tell the tale of their survival or this incident. He looked at Sakumo before ordering, "destroy the ship."

Sakumo merely nodded, before looking around. He eventually flipped over the side of the ship and rushed toward the side of the ship, just below the water line. Gai felt the ship give a terrible lurch and heard the sounds of wood breaking and water rushing in. Gai barricaded the doors of the ship, in order to trap the crew on board. He felt terrible doing it, but he couldn't allow anyone else to live. If what he suspected was true, he needed keep this incident as secret as possible.

He could hear the men on the other sides of the door, trying to escape, but unsuccessful in their attempt. Gai felt the ship take another hit as Sakumo must have hit the ship again. He looked over the edge and saw the ship definitely lower into the water. After the ship took a third hit, Gai called out, "Alright, let's get back." He then jumped over the side and began water running back to their boat. Behind him, he could feel Sakumo following. When they had almost returned the to ship, Gai felt the evil chakra behind him lessen as he heard a strangled "Gai!" As he looked behind him, he could see Sakumo had cut himself off from the demonic energy and was losing consciousness. He quickly made his way over and picked Sakumo up before he had sunk too far into the water and carried him the rest of the way back to their boat.

-10-

Naruto followed his commander as normal thought began returning to his mind. He had never felt like that before. The chakra that filled his body gave him a feeling of invincibility, but also seemed to cloud his mind and increase his anger. As he followed Gai back to the ship, he wondered how he was going to turn this chakra off, or if it was even possible. Although, now that he was calming down, he seemed to be feeling more and more like his old self.

When they had almost reached the boat, Naruto closed his eyes and focused on cutting off the chakra supply in a similar way that he would cut off his own chakra. After the first couple attempts had achieved marginal success, he successfully was able to cut off the foreign chakra supply. However, in that moment, he felt a feeling of drowsiness that he knew would knock him out. The only thing he could do was call out to Gai as loud as he could before he felt himself lose consciousness.

When he awoke, he was back in the cabin on the ship. He could feel his body was exhausted, like he had been in a day long training session with Gai, but could also feel his chakra pathway's burning in a way he had not experienced before. A look around the room revealed Ibiki watching him with a suspicious expression, but no Gai.

"How long have I been out?" Naruto asked Ibiki.

Ibiki paused, looking unsure of whether or not to even respond before answering, "only an hour."

"Where's..." Naruto began.

"Gai is talking to the captain of this ship. He was pretty angry to be carrying wanted men, but I think Gai is going to offer him a bit more money for his trouble." Ibiki responded before Naruto could even ask where he was.

Naruto sat in his makeshift bed as he tried to ignore the glares Ibiki was giving him. A few minutes later they were both interrupted by the door of their cabin opening and Gai walking in. Naruto gazed at Gai, wondering what his first reaction would be to the newly discovered presence of the Kyuubi jinchuuriki.

It seemed that Gai was a bit surprised to see him awake, but after, looked at him with his seldom seen, serious face. "Well, I think you owe me an explanation."

Naruto nodded, thankful that his commander was at least not freaking out and had saved him from drowning. "Well, I guess you figured out that my birth name isn't Sakumo Hayashi."

Both Gai and Ibiki nodded, both old enough to know exactly who he was.

"Does the Hokage know?" Ibiki asked.

Naruto nodded, remembering he was also speaking to an intelligence agent. "Yes, although it was my idea to hide in plain sight."

"Why did you change your name?" Gai asked.

"Well, I don't know if you remember how I was treated back then, but it wasn't too good. If I hadn't left and reentered myself as a new person, I doubt I would have been able to become a ninja. I remember some of the lessons my old academy teachers taught me and I can guarantee you that they were purposefully teaching and grading me wrongly."

Gai considered what he had been told. It wasn't exactly wrong of someone not to want to associate with Naruto because of his circumstances, but to purposefully sabotage his education was just... unyouthful.

"Why didn't you use the Kyuubi's power earlier in the fight?" Gai asked.

"Actually, believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever used it." Naruto answered truthfully. "I guess it only activated in a life or death situation and this is the closest I've actually come to dying in my entire career."

The three sat and discussed Naruto's life and reasons for hiding for another hour before Gai stopped the conversation so all of them could rest. Since Ibiki was still recovering from the torture, Naruto from using the Kyuubi's chakra and Gai from using five of the celestial gates, they all fell to sleep with little difficulty.

-10-

A few days later, they exited the ship in the port of Wave Country. The captain and the crew were happy to offload their troubles, but were in no hurry to return to Water Country anytime soon.

Naruto and Gai, carrying Ibiki, headed straight west toward Fire Country. They reached the western side of Wave country after only a few minutes and water ran across the stretch of ocean to the mainland. As soon as the reached the other side, they took off at full speed to reach Konoha and get Ibiki to the hospital.

During one of their breaks, they stopped at a river to replenish their water and to quickly consume some of their rations. The two didn't need many breaks due to Naruto's stamina and Gai's endurance, but Naruto wanted to discuss a few things before entering Konoha.

"I feel like this should probably be spoken of before returning to Konoha, but I feel I need to request that you keep quiet about me until we've spoken to the Hokage." Naruto began. "I know I can't order you to stay quiet, but I would request that you at least do so until you've spoken with the Hokage."

Both Gai and Ibiki considered what he said before Gai responded. "Well, as the ranking officer, I would agree. Ibiki, as the jonin in charge, I order you to not speak of the fight we had on the boat until the Hokage clears you to." Gai ordered Ibiki and waited for him to nod his head in understanding. "We'll drop you off at the hospital as soon as we get to Konoha and Sakumo and I will head directly to the Hokage."

Both Naruto and Ibiki nodded at this.

"Yosh, let's get going then!" Gai suddenly shouted, surprising his teammates with a return to his default personality.

The three of them reached Konoha early that evening, rushing to the main gate, skipping the short line of people waiting to enter. "Gai Maito and Sakumo Hayashi returning from mission A86-192 with injured ninja Ibiki Morino." Gai firmly told the gate guards, to let them know the urgency of their situation.

The gate guards, Izumo and Kotetsu, quickly assessed the situation, checking their old teammate to make sure he was okay before nodding and motioning them to go to the hospital.

The pair of ninja immediately rushed to the hospital to drop off their comrade in the emergency entrance. After seeing him rushed to an examination room to be checked out by doctors, the two made their way to the administration building, hoping to speak to the sandaime before he retired for the evening.

After passing through the checkpoints, they made their way up to the upper floors of the building, only stopping once they had reached the outer office of the Hokage.

"Excuse me, we need to speak to the Hokage about an A-ranked mission we just returned from." Gai spoke to the secretary.

The secretary, a young woman who was actually an undercover Anbu, analyzed both of them for threats. She recognized Gai, knowing that while he may be highly eccentric, he wouldn't waste the Hokage's time with something unless it was important. She checked the schedule in front of her before entering the Hokage's office to notify him of the visitors. After a few seconds, she exited and told them he would be finishing a meeting shortly.

Thirty seconds later, Koharu and Homura exited the office, glancing at Gai with curiosity, wondering what he would be reporting to the Hokage, before moving aside and letting them enter. As soon as they were inside the Hokage began with, "what's wrong?"

Gai and Naruto glanced at each other before Naruto began. "Nothing is wrong per-say, it's just that during a rough point in our mission I had to use my... special power that only I can use."

The Hokage blinked before recognizing in his mind what Naruto was referring to. "Anbu, leave us. Tell me everything."

Gai and Naruto began with their mission, how they rescued Ibiki while he was being tortured, how they fled from Kiri, and eventually their fight with the platoon of ninja on the other ship. Finally, Naruto explained how he had revealed his identity to the other ninja.

Through it all, the Hokage listened patiently and kept a serious look on his face. When they were finished, the Hokage turned in his chair and smoked his pipe, all the while thinking about what had occurred. 'This isn't a situation that needed immediate action, but the usage of the Kyuubi's power had probably scared Gai and Morino-san into bringing it to my attention as soon as possible.'

"Very well, Gai, the events on the ship will be regarded as an S-class secret the same as Naruto's status as the jinchuuriki. When Naruto reverts back to his previous name and reveals his status, you may speak of the mission to other Konoha ninja, but until then please keep it to yourself. I will speak to Morino-san tomorrow. Until then, dismissed. Naruto, stay for a while."

Naruto nodded to Gai as he left the room to return home.

"Sit down, Naruto." The sandaime waved him to a pair of comfortable chairs off to the side of the room where the Hokage had a seat himself. Naruto sat in the other chair, facing him. "Please, describe exactly what occurred."

Naruto didn't need any more clarification than that to find out what he was referring to. He spoke of the empty hallways, the massive cage, and his interaction with the pipes of the room in siphoning the chakra from the Kyuubi.

"Did the Kyuubi show any signs of waking up when you took the chakra?" The sandaime asked.

"Not that I could tell, although when it's energy hit me I wasn't exactly paying much attention to it anymore. I was more focused on trying to return to the outside world."

The sandaime nodded in understanding. They both remained silent for the next few minutes.

"Naruto, I feel I need to inform you of a situation that has recently come to my attention. Recently, my student Jiraiya, has been investigating a new group by the name of 'Akatsuki.' This group is made up of multiple S-class missing-nin."

"Multiple S-class missing-nin?" Naruto questioned, knowing the power such a group could hold.

"Yes. We have confirmed that both Itachi and Orochimaru are members of this group. Recently they have been hiring themselves out for cheap S-rank missions, but they have also expressed long-term interest in gathering intelligence regarding the tailed beasts and their current containers." The sandaime eventually let out, carefully gauging Naruto's reaction to this news.

Naruto was in fact in a flurry of deep thought. 'Multiple S-class ninja interested in the power inside of him, including two of Konoha's most notorious criminals ever!' He knew he was pretty skilled for his age, but against a force like that... it painted a grim view of the future. "Do we know anything else about them?"

The sandaime shook his head. "At this point, not much else. We are not even sure of which country they are operating out of or even the leadership of such an organization."

"Are they actively hunting jinchuuriki?"

"No, although I don't know what would happen if they ran into one by accident."

Naruto again thought about what he had heard, but in the end, needed more time to process it. "Can I be relieved of duty for the next few days? I'd like to consider what you've said and recover from my last mission."

The sandaime nodded and stood up to return to his position behind his desk. "Take a week off. I'll send a notice out for another meeting and we'll talk more then."

Naruto bowed gratefully and exited the office, determined to get some rest and shelve thinking about the conversation until tomorrow.

-10-

Naruto had spent the next few days both relaxing and studying in the library. He had tried to work out a couple of times, but every time he did the thought of multiple S-class ninja entered his mind. He knew that he was probably a solid B-rank ninja at the moment and showed potential for eventually becoming an A-rank, but that wasn't for a few more years at current pace. If he wanted to advance more quickly, he had to find way's to rise above his current abilities. Far above.

If there was one thing that set S-class ninja apart from their A-rank counterparts, it was the prodigious talent and power they showed to at least one of the ninja aspects. Upon reviewing the bingo book, he highlighted the strengths of the S-class missing-nin and tried to learn what made them so great.

Sasori of Suna for instance, had shown a mastery of puppets that had risen above any other puppeteer on the planet. Kisame Hoshigaki of Kiri had shown a mastery of water that was almost equal to the nidaime Hokage and had been a high ranking member of the seven swordsmen of the mist, so that had to be considered as well. The current Raikage had developed a lightning jutsu that allowed him to move at speeds faster than any man alive, and had taijutsu skill even greater than Gai. Naruto knew that if he wanted to match any of them, he needed to give himself an edge, develop one or more of his skills beyond that known to any other.

Since the development of these skills was often times highly explosive and dangerous, he needed to do it in an area devoid of any life. With this, Naruto began developing a rough training plan for the future. He knew that he would need to leave Konoha to do it, so he prepared for his next meeting with the Hokage to hash things out with him. It reminded him of his original conversation many years ago, where he was asking the Hokage to leave for years, but suspected that this conversation would be much easier than that one.

-10-

Naruto entered the Hokage's office for the second time in a week. This time, he was more resolute in his thoughts and decisions. He knew what he needed to do. He may not have a precise plan and a surefire way to reach the S-class level, but he at least understood the methods he would have to employ to even have a shot.

After dismissing his guards, the Hokage opened with a simple "hello again, Naruto."

"Hey, Hokage-sama"

"So, shall we resume where we left off." The sandaime seated himself back within one of the comfortable chairs off to the side.

"Yes. I suppose before I begin with my thoughts, did you have anything else to add from our last conversation? Any other groups interested in me or Konoha I should be aware of?" Naruto began, slightly lighthearted at the end, hoping that was the last of the bad news.

"Well, fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, that is the extent of what our intelligence has been able to gather." The sandaime concluded, happy to see that Naruto was at least in good spirits.

"Well then, I've come to a conclusion that I suppose you have come to as well." Naruto said, advancing the conversation along the same path as his thoughts over the last week.

"And that is?"

"I need to be a hell of a lot stronger by the time they make their move." Naruto said simply.

The sandaime grinned, but nonetheless nodded his head.

"I've spent the last week studying S-class level ninja and I've decided on a course of action I'd like you to sponsor."

"Go ahead," the sandaime motioned.

"I need to go on a training trip and try to advance some of my skills beyond that of what normal ninja are capable of."

The sandaime nodded, having expected this. "Do you have a plan for such a training trip?"

"I have a rough idea for one, although I will need some initial assistance for the first few months of said trip." Naruto admitted.

"What kind of training do you have in mind for the first part of your training trip?" The sandaime asked.

Naruto paused, as if reassuring himself of this path. "Kyuubi training. I need to learn how to call upon the Kyuubi's chakra at will as well as finding out how to safely use more and what limits exist for me. I will also need a place I can safely use this energy without any settlements in the area to harm or foreign ninja to alert."

The sandaime nodded, again having suspected that Naruto would one day have to be trained in this way. "What do you need? I assume you would like a seal master to observe and monitor the training."

"Actually, I'd prefer to have a Yamanaka mind walker, possibly one with some medical training as well." Naruto interrupted his current thinking path.

"Why?"

"The last thing I want at the moment is a seal master mucking around the the seal that the yondaime designed specifically for me. If he intended for me to be able to use the beast's chakra, then I have no doubt that the seal is capable of doing so. The last thing I want however, is a seal master thinking he knows better and altering the seal in some way that will come back to bite me in the ass later. I would over course be grateful if a seal master could provide chakra suppressing tags to stop me from going on a rampage, but I want to try to do it my way first." Naruto explained.

"Furthermore," Naruto continued before the Hokage could interrupt. "I need someone who can help me train to access the Kyuubi's cage at will. The first time I was able to do so was during a situation where I was near death. If a Yamanaka was not involved and I wanted to get there quick, the only way to do so would be to recreate the experience, which I, quite frankly, don't want to do."

The sandaime thought about what Naruto had said. He had originally wanted to send for Jiraiya when Naruto had brought up the idea of a training trip. However Jiraiya was rather impetuous when it came to training students and wouldn't hesitate to do something incredibly stupid in order to force Naruto to access the Kyuubi's cage again. He long suspected it had been more of a testament to Minato's incredible talent rather than Jiraiya's teaching ability that gave him the strength to rise to the rank of Hokage.

"I would consider it incredibly dangerous for a Yamanaka to attempt to access your mindscape. No one really knows what sort of damage the Kyuubi could do." The sandaime eventually responded to Naruto's idea.

"I know." Naruto said. "But if the Kyuubi is indeed still asleep, we can figure that out now, instead of later when it might not be. From what I observed, the Kyuubi is sealed in a small portion, as long as the Yamanaka is skilled enough, we should be able to appear on the outside. Aside from that, it is a risk, but it's a calculated one."

The Hokage nodded, understanding more than anyone the weight of risk taking. "And what you said about one with medical training?"

"Well I only have one experience so far..." Naruto began. "But even the limited amount of energy from the Kyuubi was quite corrosive for me. I could still feel the burns it gave my internal chakra pathway's even hours afterward. Perhaps I would adapt over time, but I would prefer to have a medical expert there to confirm what is happening and perhaps even hypothesize ways I could protect myself from it's effects."

The sandaime nodded, noting that Naruto had given this quite a bit of thought. "Very well, I will approve. I will begin looking for members of the Yamanaka clan that meet your expectations, but you should be warned, I will be looking for advanced members, so finding one with medical training is unlikely. There will probably need to be a separate person there for what you have in mind. And I assume you are aware, both people would know exactly who they are working with."

Naruto nodded, "yes, I don't think I will require a face mask for this trip."

"How long do you think it will take?"

"Well, the Kyuubi training I'm hoping I can do in maybe three months. However, that is just the first thing I want to do on my trip. I also want to try and enhance some of my ninjutsu as well as try out a few other things." Naruto ended his statement rather cryptically.

"Very well, I will allow you to leave Konoha for a maximum of one year. As for where, I would advise either some of the uninhabited islands near sea country or possibly the untouched forests to the south."

Naruto nodded, making a note to look at the atlas's in the library for more information.

"Come back tomorrow at this time. I will assemble a list of trustworthy Yamanaka's and medical-nin to accompany you for the first few months. We can interview and brief whoever we decide before you leave." The sandaime ordered, using the critical thinking that had so helped him during his long tenure as Hokage.

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Naruto replied simply, but happily at the favorable outcome.

-10-

Over the next two days Naruto and the Hokage went through a list of active ninja who would have the necessary skills to help Naruto while being open to helping a jinchuuriki as well. Almost all the genin were immediately crossed off the list as well as those too important to leave Konoha for an extended period.

Eventually they found a potential candidate in the form of a chunin working within the interrogation department. This particular Yamanaka, named Tetsuya was technically on the injured list for extensive burns on his left arm, but was still one of the best mind specialists in Konoha. Reports from fellow ninja listed him as helpful, good spirited, and a bit of a joker.

On the third day of their search, the Hokage brought Tetsuya Yamanaka into his office and briefed him on the potential mission. He made it clear that this mission would be voluntary and carry inherent risk before even explaining what it was, and although the mission would be an A-rank for him, it would be classified S-rank.

Upon explaining what the mission was, Tetsuya was noticeably worried. After all, it was considered a spectacularly bad idea to mind walk a jinchuuriki.

"Why me, Hokage-sama?" Tetsuya asked.

"Naruto only recently activated the Kyuubi's powers for the first time. He needs to learn how to control these abilities for the future. You have a lot of mind walking experience, but aren't high ranked enough that your presence would be too missed for a few months." The Hokage explained.

"So I'm expendable, in other words." Tetsuya said snidely.

"I guess there is no denying that that's a factor, but we really don't expect there to be a problem. Uzumaki reported that the Kyuubi was asleep during his encounter and that he originally appeared away from it's cage. Furthermore, the link between his mindscape and the seal is not completely understood. It's highly possible that you will not even be able to access the Kyuubi." The Hokage tried to be as honest as possible, knowing that trying to fool the interrogation expert would only cause future problems.

"Then why does he need a Yamanaka at all?"

"As I said before, this is the first time he was able to access the cage and that was when he was in mortal peril. After much thought, I can think of there are only three ways to reach the cage again: another incident of mortal peril, which would be dangerous, advanced meditation, which could take years, and a mind walk." The Hokage explained.

Tetsuya sighed before thinking about this as rationally as he could. "So what is it exactly that you are expecting of me?"

"First, access his mindscape and assess the situation with the Kyuubi. Next, help Naruto figure out a way to access the Kyuubi's cage on his own without being in mortal peril. Finally, observe the process of how Naruto takes the Kyuubi's energy and see if you can offer any suggestions for either making it safer or potential dangers in what he is doing."

"Are you asking me to teach him Yamanaka secret family jutsus?" Tetsuya asked, slightly outraged.

"If necessary... yes. I will smooth things over with Inoichi, but I'm not trying to steal your families techniques, I just want to make sure Naruto is mentally prepared for any future interaction with the most dangerous demon in the world. And since most of that interaction will be happening in his own mind, I would be a fool not to ask your clan to give him even a little training on how to defend his mind."

Tetsuya grimaced and pondered the thought of fighting a mental battle against a demon, if he were the jinchuuriki. "Alright, but we perform the initial mind walk here with Inoichi standing by, just to make sure such an attempt is even possible."

The Hokage thought about this, deciding that it would be an acceptable risk. "Very well, meet me at the safe-house here in two days time at 10 am." The Hokage quickly wrote down the address of a building near the Anbu headquarters they used for meetings outside of the tower.

Tetsuya nodded before leaving to prepare for what could be his most dangerous mind walk ever.

-10-

Naruto walked into the building, whose address was on the note provided by the Hokage. At first glance, it appeared to be just like any other house, but after a deeper look, Naruto could see that things were not as they seemed. The building had the appearance of a larger house, but it had almost no windows facing the street, and there appeared to be multiple entrances or exits in and out of the building, with none of them facing the street. On the walk here, Naruto had become aware of two separate Anbu patrols nearby, so it was in a well guarded section of town as well.

As Naruto went around the side of the house, he felt the presence of someone watching him, but couldn't identify who or where it was coming from. Naruto supposed that since he was not dressed in his traditional 'Sakumo' uniform, he was somewhat extra paranoid, after all, the people inside were suppose to be meeting Naruto, not Sakumo.

As he entered the building, he immediately took note of two separate people, both Yamanaka's by the hair style. It also seemed that the Hokage had not arrived yet.

"Greetings, thank you for your assistance today." Naruto said while bowing his head, trying to remain as polite as possible.

The two Yamanaka's both examined him carefully before neutrally responding with polite, if rather low toned, formalities.

Two minutes later, the Hokage arrived, instructing his Anbu guard to remain outside. He took quick stock of the room, noting everyone was here, with a slightly heavy atmosphere. "Well, shall we get started? I would like to remind both of you that you are here to assess the situation with the Kyuubi." The Hokage started, speaking to the two Yamanaka. "You are not here to dig into the personal or professional life of Naruto."

Both Tetsuya and Inoichi nodded, not particularly happy to be doing this, but both had considered and discussed the ramifications of not having a mentally stable jinchuuriki with access to demonic powers.

Tetsuya gestured toward a pair of seats facing each other. "Let's get this over with. Please have a seat, Uzumaki-san."

Naruto nodded and made his way over, almost as nervous as Tetsuya. After all, if something went wrong, the Yamanaka clan would likely hold him responsible and never forgive him. He took a seat and tried to relax as Tetsuya started slowly making hand seals.

"Mind Walking Jutsu" Tetsuya declared, apparently wasting no time.

-10-

Tetsuya immediately took note of his surroundings. He did a full 360 degree turn, twice, verifying that their was no sign of the Kyuubi in sight. He breathed a sigh of relief, before starting his exploration of the mind.

He took a brief look around, noting that their were a few area's of interest that he would normally go straight for if this were a regular interrogation, but ignored them for now. After a few more minutes with no sign of the Kyuubi, he decided to leave, knowing that now that he could access the mind, this would likely only be the first of many trips to this mind.

He prepared the hand seals and departed the mind in the exact spot he entered, noting it's position as a safe entry point. As he appeared into the real world he saw three relieved faces, all happy to see that he had made it back safely.

"Well?" The Hokage questioned.

"I was able to travel safely to his mind, but after an initial search was able to find no trace of the Kyuubi." Tetsuya briefed the Hokage on his short search.

The Hokage looked to the head of his clan, Inoichi, and stared at him, as if having a completely silent conversation.

"Very well." Inoichi eventually responded to the Hokage's silent stare. "Tetsuya, you will instruct Naruto on how to access his mindscape at will and continue to search for access to the Kyuubi. You will teach Naruto how to defend his mind from external and internal intrusions and if possible, provide insight as to how he might be able to access the Kyuubi's chakra or youki or whatever it is."

Tetsuya nodded to his clan head, at least happy that the worst part was over and that he was still in one piece.

Three days later, Tetsuya and Naruto left the village together, preparing to make their way to remote sections of Fire Country for training that neither one of them was looking forward to. The Hokage had said that he was still looking for a medical-nin, but would direct him or her toward them within a few weeks.

-10-

AN: I like the name Gai Maito better than Guy Might. I've always been a little confused about his level of non-taijutsu abilities. He can summon turtles, water walk, and dispel genjutsu, but not do anything else? So, in my story he can to some ninjutsu, deal with it.

I'm sure a few people will try to flame me saying that Ibiki received his scars from Ame ninja while pursuing his brother and Aoi, but this happens prior, just before he became a torture specialist. Again, my story, deal with it.

The thing with the pipes in the Kyuubi's cage, again I didn't want to have the Kyuubi conversation quite yet, so had to think of something else. Feel free to flame, but if you do, tell me what I could have done instead while keeping the Kyuubi asleep. (and don't flame as a 'guest' or 'userid')

I'm not sure of when exactly it was that Orochimaru separated from Akatsuki, but I'm pretty sure that it took Konoha more than a few months to find out, hence why according to the sandaime, they are both current members.

Tetsuya is an OC with a name that means 'clear philosophy'. There really aren't that many Yamanakas shown in the manga or anime and I plan on making them a major clan of Konoha, so I will be inventing a few characters from this and the other clans.

Mind Walking Jutsu – Pretty original huh! I really thought there were more Yamanaka family jutsus than the ones I found online, so I have to invent a few.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Hana Inuzuka dug her hands into the earth as she was once again flung into the ground. The fight was not going the way she had expected. She didn't expect her current opponent to be this good, considering her opponent was supposed to be mostly retired.

Hana was currently sparring with her mother, who had taken to her desire to train more vigorously than she had thought she would. Hana cursed her life, her mother, and that damn Sakumo for suggesting this.

In the last few months, Hana's mother had decided that she was fed up with Hana's lack of relationships. Apparently, approaching twenty years old now made her an old maid and she had to settle down and get married immediately. Every day for the last few months, her mother would go on and on about which suitor she should marry and how many kids she should be having. It was enough to driver her crazy.

When Sakumo had come over, to tell her that he was leaving on a training trip, she had been saddened to hear that her friend would be even more apart from her than he was lately. She had questioned why he was leaving to train and not just stick around Konoha, but her friend looked decidedly uncomfortable and seemed to not know how to respond.

Hana could see there was something he wasn't telling her, but decided to let him off the hook, IF he could help her with her problem. His suggestion, was to distract her with something else, for instance, helping her become a jonin. At first, she was conflicted, as she was almost ready to make the transition from medical-nin to veterinarian, but seeing Sakumo a tokubetsu jonin already made her slightly embarrassed due to the fact that he was younger than her.

In the end the plan did work, as she had not heard a peep out of her mother about marriage in the last week, but she didn't realize her mother was still this strong. She struggled to get back up as her dogs returned to her, worn out from their battle with Kuromaru, her mother's companion. She made it to her feet, barely ready for another charge from her mother, cursing Sakumo while at the same time thinking about the other suggestion he had made.

Flashback

"You could tell her that you promised to go on a date with me when I got back." Sakumo half-joked to Hana. "That would delay her for a bit, although I think it would make her angry at me for leaving."

End Flashback

Hana smirked, decided to hold that in reserve. Although, now that she thought about it, he had grown up quite a bit. Internally she wondered what he looked like behind his mask.

-11-

Naruto sat, quietly meditating for what seemed like an endless number of hours. When he had envisioned a Yamanaka helping him access the cage of the Kyuubi, he wasn't exactly sure of how it would work, or if it would work for that matter, but he thought it would be more active than this.

He had spent the last week meditating and using a Yamanaka secret family jutsu to access his own mindscape. He had no idea how the Hokage had convinced the Yamanaka's to teach him this technique, but Tetsuya Yamanaka had. The clan head had made him sign an agreement never to reveal the training method to anyone and to keep it to himself until the day he died, but if it could help him, it was worth it.

This particular technique was nothing like he had done before, as it happened completely within his own mind and was considerably dangerous for a non-Yamanaka clan member to do. The technique gave his mind a presence and allowed him to form a connection to it. It wasn't anything like he previous experience of just traveling to the Kyuubi's cage, it was more just feeling his own mind.

Naruto wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to be accomplishing with this technique, but Tetsuya had made him keep practicing the jutsu over and over. Tetsuya had told Naruto to focus on memorizing how his mind felt, so that in the future he could know whether the Kyuubi had altered it in any way.

Naruto was 'feeling' his mind for what seemed like the millionth time when he suddenly became aware of a presence he had not felt before. He locked onto it and tried to 'examine' it but in the end didn't know what to do. He tried to somehow get closer and find the disturbance when he felt a pulling sensation that seemed to draw him in. Naruto was so surprised and new to this that he didn't know whether he should or even could stop it from happening.

"Good." A voice said when the pulling had stopped.

Naruto looked around to see Tetsuya standing in front of him. Although something was weird, he was dressed differently and his arm looked completely undamaged. "What?..." Naruto tried to say, but was so confused at this turn of events that he was literally speechless.

"We are inside your mind." Tetsuya said calmly. "I have been entering your mind once a day for the last three days, waiting to see whether you could sense me. Today you have succeeded."

"Inside my mind? Wait... if you could bring me here, why didn't you do so in the first place?" Naruto said, still confused at what was happening.

"It doesn't work like that. Usually the consciousness is so spread out and unfocused that if I tried, it would either fail, or only part of your consciousness would appear. However, since you learned to feel your mind and focus yourself completely on my presence, I was able to finally draw you in completely." Tetsuya lectured. "Now that I have successfully done this once, each time should be easier for both of us until you are able to enter your mind on your own."

Naruto tried to understand what was happening, but was out of his depth. In the end, he decided to simply trust the expert. "Okay, what now?"

"Now you leave and try again. Next time, pay attention to how it feels when I draw you in." Tetsuya explained.

"How do I leave?" Naruto asked when he was suddenly ejected from his current position.

And so, for the next few hours, Naruto spent his time entering and ejecting from his own mind, trying to adapt and learn how to do it on his own.

-11-

After a day of those repeated patterns of enter and eject, Naruto was finally able to access his mind on his own. He briefly wondered how the first Yamanaka had learned to do this, without the aid of a teacher, but let it go now that he had an entire mind to explore.

Yes, that was the next step, exploration. Naruto spent the next few days exploring his mind and learning the layout of his own mind. So far he had visited portions of his own life that he had both remembered and forgotten, but hadn't seen any sign of the Kyuubi or the pipe filled area.

Although Tetsuya seemed a bit disappointed that he hadn't found the Kyuubi's cage on his own, he did remark that Naruto wasn't ready to interact with the Kyuubi quite yet. First Tetsuya recommended that Naruto install some mental defenses, to prepare for said encounter.

And so, Naruto spent yet another week, shoring up his defenses and preparing his mind for any confrontation with the Kyuubi. When they received a message from the Hokage saying that he had found an appropriate medical-nin and she would meet them in eight days, Tetsuya finally gave some instruction that he thought might reveal the Kyuubi's location.

Tetsuya did some special Yamanaka family jutsu that affected his mind in some way that Naruto could only speculate as to what it did. When Naruto returned to the real world, he found Tetsuya had pushed him over and was standing over him, kunai to his throat. Naruto tried to move, but found himself to be paralyzed, he couldn't move!

"Ha! Finally trapped you." Tetsuya declared, his voice sounding different than it had before.

"What? What are you doing? How is this going to get me closer to the Kyuubi?" Naruto asked, panicked but trying to rationally decide what he was doing.

"Finding the Kyuubi? HA, the reason we couldn't find the Kyuubi is because you are the Kyuubi!"

"No, that's not true!" Naruto denied.

"You forget, I've been inside your mind! I know the truth. I'm going to kill you and end the threat of the Kyuubi forever!" Tetsuya declared as he started to cut the kunai into Naruto's neck.

"NOOooo..." Naruto cried, before the kunai literally cut through his own words.

Naruto blacked out as he could feel his life blood being drained from him. His mind drifted, he could feel a familiar feeling overtake him as he felt himself journeying to a place he had been before.

-11-

"You okay?"

Naruto opened his eyes and saw Tetsuya standing over him. He immediately scrambled away and looked for a weapon.

"Easy now, it was just a genjutsu." Tetsuya explained.

"Genjutsu? No... I would have known." Naruto had not been fooled by a genjutsu in a very long time. His mind was still dulled, but he was sure of that.

"Remember the jutsu I performed before I tried to kill you? That wasn't to paralyze you, it was to dull your senses. You needed a life or death situation to draw you into the seal. Once I saw where your consciousness was going, I was able to 'hitch a ride,' so to speak. Look around, this is the place, isn't it?" Tetsuya explained.

Naruto took a second look around, while feeling his neck to find no puncture wounds. It was the same environment he remembered being in during the Kiri mission. He took a deeper look around, still weary of Tetsuya, but seeing his arm perfectly healed and not feeling any injuries to himself helped his cause.

They approached the cage room cautiously. Neither of them were in any hurry and Tetsuya was interested to see if there was anything else to see around here. Unfortunately, the only thing of any interest was the cage itself.

The massive cage stood strong and foreboding. The strong gates held by a single piece of paper, gave a feeling of impending doom that forced the travelers to remind themselves that it was merely a representation of the seal.

Inside the cage, both of them could see the Kyuubi, still slumbering and seemingly in the same position it was before. Naruto approached the pipe he had visited before, still in it's position, unchanged since the last time Naruto had interacted with it. Naruto apprehensively placed his hand on the pipe and felt the same power he had felt before coursing through it. Having no desire to take the Kyuubi's power now, Naruto removed his hand.

Naruto turned his attention back to Tetsuya. "So now that I'm here, can you find this place again?"

Tetsuya thought about it for a second. "Well, it was of a strange journey, since Yamanaka's are usually focused on the mind, not that there is usually somewhere else to go, but yeah, I think I can."

"Then let's try entering and leaving until I can find this place on my own. Like I said before, I'd rather not disturb it until I have to." Naruto decided.

Tetsuya nodded, before reaching out to grab Naruto's shoulder.

-11-

They practiced this for the next couple days before Naruto decided it was time to try and use the Kyuubi's power a second time. As with before, he was able to use the pipe as a sort of delivery system for drawing the Kyuubi's power into Naruto.

Naruto sat with the glow of the orange chakra surrounding him, trying to feel the chakra as it ran through his body and mind. He could feel his mind was a bit more coherent now than it was before, but that could be for any number of reasons including: he was not in a battle, there was no urgency, and there was only one other person in the area and he knew what was going on.

When he mentioned this to Tetsuya and when both of them saw that the Kyuubi remained sleeping, they decided to investigate what was happening from different angles. Tetsuya observed what happened both while in the seal with Naruto and how the Kyuubi's chakra interacted with his mind when he was 'high' on it.

Although he could not provide any insights into how the seal or pipes worked, he did have some thoughts about what was happening in the mind, and why the kyuubi was still asleep.

It seemed that the Kyuubi's chakra dulled the receptors and synapses within the brain and provided an almost drug like feel, amplifying emotions. Tetsuya hypothesized that if he could somehow shield these parts of the brain, Naruto would be better able to control his emotions.

As for why the Kyuubi was still asleep, Tetsuya verified that he was only using a tiny portion of the beast's chakra.

"Trust me, I was there the day the Kyuubi attacked." Tetsuya stated, adamant that he was nowhere close to the sheer terror the Kyuubi's presence provided. "The amount you're producing compared to the power it wielded when attacking Konoha is like comparing a fart to a hurricane. It probably wouldn't even notice it was gone even if it was awake, provided he hadn't seen you take it."

So after a few more day, Naruto and Tetsuya decided they should use the last few days before the medic arrived to try and channel more of the Kyuubi's chakra.

Naruto sat cross-legged on the ground, readying himself to channel more chakra than he had done previously. Tetsuya waited 300 meters away, fingering one of the seals the Hokage had provided him with before departing.

As Naruto made his way to the seal with little effort, he approached the pipe that he had become very familiar with place his hands on it. After taking one more breath, more to calm himself down as breathing mattered very little where he was now, he willed more chakra out than he had ever done before.

He could feel the chakra surrounding him, like it had done before, but this time could feel the pipe still releasing chakra to him even after he had removed his hands. The orange chakra around him started to darken as it seemed to become more dense. He felt the dull in is mind set in as he returned to the outside world.

The first thing he became aware of was that his mind was even more clouded than before. He stretched his muscles out as he struggled to keep the negative emotions from overpowering his mind. He settled into place and willed himself to give a short nod in the direction of his distant comrade, to show he was still in control. When he felt his mind return to at least a semblance of it's original state, he allowed himself to move around.

As expected, he was faster and stronger than he could ever remember being. The feeling of invincibility returned in force and he felt even stronger than before. As he knelt beside a lake, he examined himself in the waters edge, confused at what he was seeing at first.

He was crouched in front of the lake and it seemed like he was imitating a fox in terms of behavior. Now that he paid attention to it, it seemed that when he was testing his speed and strength, he was doing so using both his arms and legs, like an animal.

This particular comparison in his mind filled him with the desire to return to his original state. As he willed the foul chakra to return to the cage, he felt himself returned to normal. Although it was a difficult process and it felt even more difficult this time, every bit of progress he made in expelling the chakra, made the next bit even easier.

Once he had cleared the chakra completely from his system, he let himself collapse in place. He could hear Tetsuya approaching, but didn't pay any further attention. The strain on his system was worse than last time, as he could clearly feel his chakra pathway's screaming from being used to channel what it wasn't supposed to. When he felt himself pass out, it came as a relief.

-11-

"How did it look from your end?" Naruto asked, soon after he woke up.

Tetsuya, who was checking Naruto over with the limited amount of medical experience he had paused before answering. "Much more terrifying," he eventually answered.

Naruto sighed, somewhat expecting this, as it was similar to what he experienced when looking himself in the reflective surface of the water.

"This time, you looked like a miniature Kyuubi and behaved similarly." Tetsuya stated, also avoiding eye contact with Naruto.

Naruto nodded, aware of this. "How long was I like that?"

"Less than a minute." Tetsuya said. Actually, now that he thought about it, it was a lot less time than Naruto was normally under the influence of the Kyuubi. "Why so short? Any problems?"

"Just shocked at my appearance I guess. And my mind was even more clouded than normal."

"Now what?" Tetsuya asked.

Naruto paused and thought about that very thing himself. After a while he eventually decided. "Let's take a little break from Kyuubi training until the medic arrives. Whoever the sandaime sends can give us a better idea about what is happening to my physical body. In the mean time, I'll just do some normal training."

Tetsuya nodded, happy to get a small break from feeling the foul chakra.

-11-

Their medic ending up arriving two days later than expected. Both Naruto and Tetsuya were shocked to find out who the sandaime had gotten.

"What do you need from me so I can get out of here?"

"Did the Hokage not inform you why you were here?" Tetsuya asked.

"He said something about chakra pathways and something," the woman replied vaguely.

Naruto and Tetsuya looked at each other, wondering if she was speaking in code. Upon taking a closer look at the woman they discovered that her eyes were slightly bloodshot, when they were open, and she was wincing at every noise. In other words, she was hungover.

"Senju-sama, would you like to rest a bit before we begin?" Naruto asked the woman, a bit worried she didn't know what she was involved in.

"Tsunade-sama is a bit tired from the journey, but I assure you she is perfectly capable of examining you." Shizune, her assistant reassured them, though both Naruto and Tetsuya could see a bit of doubt in her eyes.

Tetsuya looked to Naruto, as if wondering whether or not to proceed before Naruto shrugged and decided to trust the expert.

"Alright," Naruto began, "give me your expert opinion on this."

With that, Naruto began the now familiar process of activating the Kyuubi's chakra. For this first time, he decided to go with the amount he had begun training with and not the tailed state. He felt the familiar burn of the Kyuubi's chakra as in poured into his chakra pathway's and out of his tenkutsu. The familiar shroud of light orange made itself visible as a fist suddenly knocked him unconscious.

-11-

Tetsuya watched as Naruto began the now familiar process of extracting the Kyuubi's chakra. Every time he felt it, he returned to that terrible night where the Kyuubi attacked. He knew it wasn't Naruto's fault, but he still wasn't comfortable with it.

He looked over to see Tsunade's face and wondered what she would have to say about the process, when he saw a look of panic and fear on her face. He was about to ask her what was wrong when she cocked her arm back and struck Naruto right in the face with a massive blow!

Tetsuya watched as Naruto went flying and crashed into a number of trees.

"What are you doing!?" Tetsuya screamed to the woman.

"What am I doing? What is he doing! That's a jinchuuriki!" Tsunade yelled.

Tetsuya blinked in confusion. "Of course he's a jinchuuriki! That's why you're here! To tell us how the Kyuubi's chakra interacts with his body!"

"What?!" She responded, now confused.

Tetsuya turned to her assistant. "You said she was ready, you said she understood!"

"I... I..." Shizune looked even more confused at what was going on. Clearly neither woman understood what was happening.

Tetsuya dashed over to where Naruto had landed and began examining him. "Will one of you get over here and start treating him?! What kind of stupid medics are you!"

-11-

It had turned out that Tsunade was only doing this because the sandaime was paying off some of her debts and couldn't refuse her sensei. It also turned out that it wasn't the first time she had taken a healing job to pay for her debts and assumed that this would be just another simple job. When Naruto started to channel the bijuu's chakra, old memories surfaced and triggered her self-defense mechanism.

Needless to say, when Tetsuya had explained their purpose here they were suitably embarrassed. Or at least, Shizune was embarrassed enough to help heal Naruto. Tsunade was just irritated and hiding her embarrassment with anger.

A day later they began again. Only this time, everyone understood what was happening and what their roles were supposed to be. It also helped that everyone was sober and not hungover, although everyone was not happy about being sober.

As Naruto begun the process of re-channeling the Kyuubi's chakra, he paid attention to the medic in front of him, wary for any further attacks. When he stabilized the amount of chakra in his body, he looked to the famous medic and nodded his head, letting her know to begin examining him.

She motioned him to lay down. When he did so she begun examining him. She examined almost every part of him, but paid particular attention to his chakra coils, his brain, and his internal organs. After ten minutes she asked Naruto to cut off the Kyuubi's chakra and again examined how the foreign chakra left his body.

When it was all done, Naruto sat back up and said, "so, what do you think?"

Tsunade looked at him with what he was confident was a brief moment of clarity said, "I think that the human body should never be expected to be used as a medium for that energy."

Naruto blinked as he processed what she said. "Well, I'd like to agree with you, but unfortunately every other major nation around us has at least one person who can do such a thing and there are people interested in worse, so I need to learn how to do this. I just want to do it as safely as I can."

Tsunade looked decidedly unpleasant at that statement, but being a former wartime ninja, understood the reality of that statement. "Fine." She eventually said, more than a little shortly. "I guess the first thing I should tell you is that the Kyuubi chakra is fire natured, so training fire manipulation will give you some protection."

"Fire is my primary element already and I have already trained my fire nature." Naruto responded, wondering if what she said no longer applied.

"Well, that's fortunate then. I imagine if your primary element was wind you would be in serious trouble. But what I mean by fire manipulation is to go even further than any book or existing exercise can teach you. You have to train your element to the point that your entire body is capable of using the element of fire almost subconsciously. If you can train your chakra pathway's themselves to not only channel fire better, but to thrive under fire natured chakra, the Kyuubi's chakra will become much more controllable." Tsunade lectured.

Naruto nodded along, understanding what she was saying and knowing it to fit in with his future plans very well. "What about the brain? Can you think of any ways for me to think better while under the influence other than training my fire element?"

"Hmm," Tsunade thought about his question. "I guess I would have to think about that for a while. There might be something to enhancing the blood-brain barrier, but I would need to research that a bit more."

-11-

After a day of thinking about it, Tsunade had yet to think of anything other than just simple meditation, but promised to think about it and if she had any ideas, to forward them to the sandaime. In the end, Tsunade decided that she had spent enough time here and wanted to go back to her busy lifestyle.

Before she left, she decided to have one more conversation alone with Naruto.

"So, yeah, uh... sorry about punching you in the face that first day." Tsunade hedged around before just going for it.

Naruto snorted under his breath, remembering the titanic strength of the woman in front of him. Deciding to try and get one more thing from the woman in front of him, he went after the one skill she had that he wanted. "The jutsu that you are using to disguise your face. Did you create it yourself? Can you teach me before you leave?"

Tsunade glared at him for seeing through her 'natural' appearance. After pausing and wondering whether or not to answer, she eventually came back to the fact that she did punch him in the face. "It's a ninjutsu/genjutsu hybrid kept continuously active through the usage of a seal on my forehead. Why?"

Naruto pointed to the whisker marks on his cheeks that were visible for the first time in almost a decade. "I've never met anyone else that has these and they identify me as being the Kyuubi jinchuuriki to anyone who knows. I was wondering if you could teach me so I could hide them." As he said that he was reminded of all the effort he went through the hide his appearance. The many times he dyed or cut his hair, wearing a mask even when eating, and using a name that was entirely made up.

Tsunade looked at him, slightly irritated that his reasons for wanting the jutsu were more noble than her reasons. "Fine, I'll write up a scroll of how to do it and how the seal works, but you have to learn it on your own." She then stormed off to her tent, to write up how to do it before getting out of this wilderness and locating the nearest village she could get a drink.

-11-

Naruto and Tetsuya stood watching Tsunade and Shizune run off to reach the nearest village, which was a considerable distance from their camp, by design.

"So, what now." Tetsuya asked Naruto.

"Now, you return to the village and I go my own way." Naruto replied, his mind made up from his talks with Tsunade.

Tetsuya looked to Naruto, it had been less than a month and Naruto had quoted that he thought it would take three months to train the Kyuubi's chakra. Once he expressed his thoughts to Naruto, he explained his reasoning.

"Tsunade said that I needed complete mastery of the fire element in order to use the Kyuubi's chakra safer. Mastering my fire nature was always on the list of things to do on this trip, but with her diagnosis, it just jumped up to number one. Until I advance in my fire training, there is little point in training the Kyuubi." Naruto explained.

Tetsuya understood what Naruto had said before asking. "Are you going to continue training the Kyuubi later on then?"

Naruto went silent at that statement, quickly reprocessing how his training trip would go. "Assuming that I make adequate progress with the next step of training, yes."

"Then you will need me for that." Tetsuya insisted.

Naruto shook his head. "No, helping me find and access the Kyuubi is the reason you are here. Further developing my control and limits are my responsibilities."

"What if you go out of control and need someone to apply one of the seals to you?" Tetsuya pulled out one of the seals the Hokage had given him, to make a point.

"If I get the the point where I need someone to apply one of these seals to me, I will be using more of the Kyuubi's chakra than you can handle." Naruto said as honestly as he could. Tetsuya was a smart man and a good mind walker, but an active ninja he was not. "I'm headed to Sea country right now to find a safe place to really practice my fire nature. I will probably stay there to train the Kyuubi's powers further as well. Give me the seals. In the future, when channeling new levels of chakra, I will make clones to apply the seal if I go too far. If they can't handle it... at least I will be away from anyone I can hurt."

Tetsuya nodded, understanding what Naruto was trying very hard not to say. He hadn't been a field ninja since his injury and if Naruto truly went out of control could do very little to stop him. "Alright, be careful, and good luck."

-11-

Naruto stared at the island in front of him. It was a smaller sized island well out of the main shipping lanes and had no people living on or anywhere near it. He had hired a charter boat from the nearest village to take him to an island with these sort of specifications and to bring him fresh food and water every week. The locals had thought he was just some rich traveler looking to take a long vacation on a deserted island, which was fine with him.

According to the locals, this island had fruit trees, no natural predators, and was a virtual paradise with the exception of one thing, there was no water. Indeed, because there was no river or stream, no one could live here and thus the island was empty. To Naruto, that meant it would be the perfect place to take his fire affinity and the Kyuubi's chakra to the next level. Of course, he had stores of water in his sealing scroll, so he would be able survive even if they missed a shipment. He could also water run back to the village in an emergency.

"You sure you want to go there?" The captain of the boat asked him from behind.

Naruto turned to the man. Although he was the captain of the boat, it was lessened by the fact that there were only two other people, his sons. "I'm sure. I could use some time to myself. You'll be here once a week to resupply me?"

The captain nodded in confirmation. "Yes, ah... you have my..."

Naruto handed him the first of many payments for both the ride and for future supplies. Non-stop B and A-rank missions had allowed him to amass a tidy fortune for himself, and in this part of the world things were cheaper anyway, so he could live here for the rest of his life if he wanted to.

The captain gratefully accepted the money and thanked the Kami that he now had a stable paying job for the next few months.

Naruto then threw his belongings into the rowboat the captain had rented him for the future and made his way to his new home for the next few months. As he rowed to the island, he saw the charter boat leaving to head home.

After a few minutes, he had rowed his way onto the beach and was tugging his boat up the beach. He tied the boat up to a nearby palm tree and set out on a brief tour of the island and to find a comfortable place to sleep.

After finding an acceptable spot to set up his tent, he began unpacking the things he would need for the foreseeable future. He also buried a bag containing his sealing scrolls of water and rations in the ground under his tent. If he accidentally destroyed his belongings during a Kyuubi rage, they would be there just in case.

As he made his way back to the beach he though to himself. 'If there is going to be one problem here, it's finding the motivation to train.' Indeed, looking out from the beach he felt a sense of peace overcome him. The gentle waves of the water, the warm sand, the beautiful day out, he felt like laying down and taking a relaxing nap. This place was a paradise.

Naruto sighed as he summoned the motivation to get started on his training.

-11-

Naruto felt like scratching his face for what felt like the hundredth time today. He was once again wearing the face mask of 'Sakumo Hayashi.' After training for nearly a year without having to wear a mask, it felt uncomfortable to be wearing one now.

"The Hokage will see you now."

Naruto looked up to the Hokage's secretary when she had spoken to him. Being around people was also something he had to get used to after being on that island for so long. He nodded to the secretary, thanking her for squeezing him into the schedule today before making his way into the Hokage's office.

"Sakumo Hayashi, returning from a training trip and reporting for duty." He announced as soon as he had entered the office. He supposed that he was doing this for formalities, but mostly he was doing it to remind the Hokage of his other name.

The sandaime Hokage smiled, happy that he had returned safely home. He quickly dismissed his guard, as was custom for their conversations, and returned his greeting. "Naruto-kun, how did your trip go?"

"Well, I assume Tetsuya made it safely home and told you about the first month?" Naruto began.

The Hokage nodded, "Yes, you are now among the recipients of Tsunade's anger club."

Naruto grimaced as he was reminded of that particular incident.

The Hokage only seemed more amused by his reaction. "But I heard that you were able to control one tail of the Kyuubi's chakra at the time your group broke up."

"After which, your student gave me the idea of better training my fire affinity to better handle the Kyuubi's chakra." Naruto continued.

"And did you?" The Hokage asked.

Naruto held up his hand, palm up, and started concentrating. Within a second, a flame emerged, enveloping his entire hand, yet not burning or melting it.

The Hokage's eyelids widened so significantly Naruto feared that his eye's might have fallen out if they weren't connected from the back.

"How...?" The Hokage asked, stunned at the control that Naruto was showing.

"I trained to the very limits, then surpassed them and repeated the process again and again." Naruto explained as he began shaping the fire into various shapes and representations of animals to further show his control.

"And the Kyuubi's chakra?" The Hokage asked, still enraptured by the control of the flames Naruto was showing.

"After a few months of fire training I was able to draw upon three tails of the Kyuubi's chakra, while still keeping control. However, when I reached the fourth tail, it triggered a different sort of transformation. The first time I tried it, I lost control and went on a rampage. Luckily, although I did quite a bit of damage to my surroundings, there were no people nearby and no one was injured."

The Hokage overcame his awe at Naruto's fire wielding abilities when Naruto had come to this part of his story. "What did you do?"

"Do you mean what did I do while under the four-tailed state, or what did I do after that?" Naruto asked the Hokage.

"Both"

"As for what I did in the four-tailed state... well... let's just say there were less trees on the island and I needed a new tent. As for how I took my training from there, I tried to further my fire training at that point but was starting to hit a limit in my fire affinity training." Naruto explained while thinking back to the bad days of his training. "I eventually tried to reach the four-tailed state again while trying to control it, but eventually, I just concentrated on learning what exactly was happening during the 'transformation' stage between tails three and four."

"Could you describe the differences to me?" The Hokage asked, curious.

Naruto thought about it for a while before deciding to give the Hokage an overview of the states he could enter into. "Well the first state is just me drawing the Kyuubi's power and using it to augment my own chakra. This is what I did during the Kiri mission. Basically, it makes me stronger and faster. The tailed state is where I draw more of the Kyuubi's chakra and based on the number of tails, that is how much of the Kyuubi's chakra I am using."

The Hokage nodded, mostly knowing this from his own battles with enemy jinchuuriki.

"For the first three tails, it just seems to be using an increasing amount of the Kyuubi's power. However at the fourth tail, the Kyuubi's chakra seems to be amplified while at the same time more concentrated. In other words, the color of the initial stage is a bright orange, the first three tailed is more of a darker orange, and the fourth tail is where the Kyuubi's chakra turns straight out red."

"How did you resolve the problem?" The Hokage asked.

"As I said before, I tried over and over trying to reach the fourth tailed state, dropping it just before I lost control, but learning a little bit each time about what was happening. It was by observing this process between the third and fourth tail that I was able to make a breakthrough and break through the limits of my own fire manipulation. I was able to get the control you saw me with earlier by learning how the Kyuubi's chakra worked." Naruto explained.

"At that point I switched from working on the Kyuubi's chakra and refocused back on my own fire manipulation. I won't say that everything worked out the way I had envisioned it, but my control of fire amplified to many times what it was previously."

The Hokage nodded, a little bit disturbed at the idea of learning from the Kyuubi's chakra. "And let me guess, after you increased your own fire skills, using the Kyuubi's chakra after that point was easier?"

"Well, it wasn't perfect, but yes, it was a bit easier." Naruto responded.

"How many tails of the Kyuubi's chakra can you use now?" The Hokage asked.

"Six."

"Let me guess, another transformation?" The Hokage surmised.

"You guessed it. Yep, only this one seems to be more size oriented." Naruto continued.

"Size oriented? You mean you get bigger? Like the real Kyuubi?" The sandaime questioned.

Naruto nodded. "It seems so. I didn't try to go that far until the end of my training trip, at which point I was preparing to return, but I wanted to try it once. I felt myself increasing in size by several orders of magnitude, but I also felt the same loss of control that I felt from before, so I aborted before achieving the seventh tail."

The Hokage nodded, grateful that he hadn't tried to push himself too far. "Anything else?"

"Not much," Naruto said thinking. "I tried to keep up my other skills, but fire and Kyuubi training occupied most of my time."

The Hokage nodded, thinking things over in his head. "Very well. Do you still wish to be known as Sakumo?"

Naruto thought deeply, but in the end reached only one answer. "Yes, I don't think I'm ready to give up being Sakumo, especially with the threat Akatsuki poses, although I think I might start telling my friends."

The Hokage nodded, accepting that answer. "Very well, in that case I promote you to full jonin for completion of this training trip and will assign you to your new duties in the next few days."

Naruto, surprised at the sudden promotion lost his train of thought for a moment before recognizing the subtle dismissal from the Hokage. "Thank you Hokage-sama," he said before turning to leave.

-11-

The next day, Naruto was walking through the village, reacquainting himself with the village layout and checking out any new stores that had opened in his absence. He was gazing disinterestedly at the clothing displayed at a civilian store when he heard the shrill shriek of a man approaching him. Naruto turned as well dressed man ran by him at full speed as if running from the devil himself. When Naruto got a look at the backside of this man, he amended the well-dressed thought when he saw that a significant portion of his pants were missing, as if they had been chewed off.

"Help! Somebody get those demons away!" The man screamed for someone to help him as he ran.

Behind him Naruto saw a familiar trio of dogs in pursuit, one of which had a matching piece of cloth in it's mouth. All three of the dogs were barking and pursuing the man, although Naruto could tell that if they wanted to, they could easily catch up to and subdue him.

"Haimaru?" Naruto called, as they passed near him.

The dogs turned to face him and sniffed at him. Simultaneously, they quickly forgot about the man they were pursuing and began clamoring for the attention of their friend, whom they had not seen in a long time.

Naruto laughed as he pet his old friends. "Hey guys, it's nice to see you too! Where's Hana?"

"Right here." A voice came from the same direction the dogs and the man had been coming from.

Naruto look over to see the familiar form of Hana Inuzuka, although something seemed off. Naruto took a closer look and notice that she was not wearing her standard chunin vest and shorts, but rather a kimono.

"Whoa, going to a party?" Naruto asked, seeing the way she was dressed.

Hana seemed to wince and responded, "no, a date. Maybe you saw him as he passed by?"

"Guy running through the street yelling his head off, missing half of his pants?" Naruto asked in a slightly serious tone.

"That would be him." Hana said, equally serious.

"So... good date?" Naruto guessed jokingly.

"About average considering the others I've had." Hana replied depressingly.

"Your mom still saying you're an old maid?" Naruto said, recalling the last conversation he had with Hana before he left.

"She laid off to train me to be a jonin, but returned with full force in the last couple months. I can't even be in the same room without her pushing husband candidates at me."

Naruto grimaced both due to what Hana was going through and due to his own lack of parents to give him a similar situation. Just then his stomach gave a rumble, indicating it needed more fuel.

"Heh, sorry." He apologized for the sound. "Since you're not busy, want to get something to eat? We can tell each other how we spent our summer."

"Spent our summer? You mean how we spent the last year?" Hana interjected.

"Sure, sure." Naruto responded.

Hana thought about it. "All right, not like I was going to do anything else."

"Great." Naruto said.

-11-

Hana hummed as she and her dogs walked back home. She had a surprisingly better day then she had thought she would have. Unsurprisingly, the joy had not come from the son of the civilian merchant her mother had set her up with, but with an old teammate of hers. Sakumo had told her about his training trip and the things he had studied, although it felt as though he was leaving a few things out. She in turn had told him about the struggles she had faced over the last year: training for and achieving the jonin rank, practicing medicine, and going on a few A-rank missions.

"You look like you're in a good mood, so when's the wedding?" Her mothers voice startled her. She looked over to the house and saw her mother kneeling near the side with one of the new pups.

"If you're talking about Oyagi, I got rid of him within the first 15 minutes." Hana replied, sickened at the thought of marrying that piece of trash.

"Oh, then what's with the good mood?" Tsume asked, not at all surprised that her date had ended like so many others.

"Sakumo returned from his training trip yesterday. I ran into him and we had lunch together."

"Ohhh, well then I'll repeat myself, when's the wedding." Tsume pounced on this new topic with the same vigor. She also enjoyed the redness that appeared on her daughters cheeks when she said it.

"What! He's a friend mother. Besides, he's younger than me."

"Not by much. And you and your pups already get along with him, so that's a plus." Tsume replied. "How does he look?"

Hana felt herself blushing as her mother asked that last question. "He's fine," she eventually mumbled and began looking for an exit.

"Hana, wait." Tsume's experienced eyes were able to see her daughter looking for an escape route. "I just want you to be happy."

"Then stop trying to set me up with people!" Hana pleaded.

"Nope, not going to happen." Her mother declared. "But I'll tell you what... if you agree to ask Sakumo out on a proper date, I won't fix you up with anyone for six months."

Hana thought about her mothers offer. On one hand six months of her mother keeping her thoughts to herself would be a dream come true, on the other hand, she would need to be the one to ask him out. But it would only be one time. "Alright, I'll do it."

-11-

Naruto was quite truly freaking out. Hana had asked him out for a date just that morning and he was so shocked that he agreed without thinking. He was currently in his new apartment sorting through his clothing, realizing he had absolutely nothing that would work for a real date. He glanced at the clock for the dozenth time since she had asked and mentally calculated how long he had to shop for some new clothing. In the end, he created half a dozen clones, gave them each some money and instructed them to find him something.

When they returned one at a time he had four sets of clothing that might work and two of the clones had returned empty handed, not that he could blame them. Naruto now had a similar situation as before, but instead of having no clothes to freak out about, he now had four sets to choose from.

As he sorted through the clothing, making an internal list of the pros and cons of each set, he pondered what he expected to happen tonight. Was Hana only asking him to get her mother off her back? What were the going to do? Was he expected to take the lead even though she asked?

Endless questions went through his mind and none of them were answered by him. He liked Hana and if he had to choose someone in the village to date, she would be near the top of the list. But she had been on a lot of dates, and he had yet to go on even one. In fact, now that he thought about it, how pathetic was that!

Eventually he decided upon a good set of pants and shoes, with a button up white shirt with the top buttons undone. He decided to forgo his usual mask and use Tsunade's jutsu to hide his whisker marks. It was truly the only 'jutsu' he had learned on his training trip, as most of it was devoted to fire and kyuubi training.

As he checked himself in front of the mirror, he decided that he could have done a lot worse. Although he might try and do something about his hair next time, for now there was no sense in changing everything.

He made his way out the door and headed toward the Inuzuka compound. He had moved when he returned to Konoha so that he would not have to live in the bad part of town and so he would not have to pay rent during his absence, so Hana did not know where he was currently living. As he traveled, he pondered what they would be doing tonight. He decided to let her take the lead and if she looked to him for the decision, he would say just dinner and a walk.

With a rough plan now in his head and date appropriate clothing on his person, he was feeling slightly better, but still very nervous. As he saw the familiar entrance to the Inuzuka compound, he wanted nothing more than to pause and rethink this whole ordeal, but he knew that if he did that he might never go through with the night, so he pressed forward. He jumped to the top of the gate, careful not to ruin the more delicate civilian style clothing to see if Hana was waiting for him.

When he looked through the window of the main Inuzuka house that Hana was dressed in the same kimono that he saw her in before, he gave a sigh of relief, as he had chosen the current outfit to match her. At that moment he saw something else that terrified him even more than any of his thoughts over the last few hours. Tsume was there as well.

'Shit! Why... of course she's going to be there. Hana said she's been sticking her nose into her dating life for the last few years, why should tonight make a difference? Now I have to endure her as well.' Naruto sighed, wondering if he could signal Hana somehow without alerting Tsume that he was here. In the end, he could find no way so Naruto resolved himself to at least get it over with.

-11-

Hana waited as patiently as she could, regretting not knowing Sakumo's new address. If she had thought even for a second about how the night would go, she would have realized her mother wouldn't let Sakumo and her just go without making them both suffer.

Hana's thoughts were interrupted by a pair of knocks coming from the front door. Hana looked over to the door, fearing the next couple minutes of her life as her mother had already beaten her to the door.

"Sa...Sakumo! Come in, come in." Her mother said, stumbling with his name for some reason.

As he walked into the entrance hall of the house, Hana could feel her eyes widen and her breath stop as she looked at him. She was so used to seeing him in ninja garb and wearing a face mask that she had forgotten that she had never truly seen him in any other shape or form. He was wearing a civilian clothing that looked damn fine on him, especially his shirt. It was open enough at the top where she could see the well tanned and developed muscles of his chest and lower arms. He also wasn't wearing a mask and could see that he had a slightly gaunt face that only amplified his brilliant blue eyes.

Hana was so shocked as his different appearance that she stood silently staring at him for almost a minute before her mother's snickering eventually broke her out of her daze. When she realized that she had been staring and her mother had caught her, she found herself flushing even harder than before.

"So... Sakumo, I believe this is the first time we've seen you without your mask. Why is that?" Tsume, who had collected herself far faster than her daughter had, took advantage of her silence to get some answers.

Naruto, uncomfortable with Hana's silence and Tsume's inquisitiveness, decided to be as brief as possible before finding a way out. "Well, I guess I got so used to having it on that I just never took it off. Although it can be a bit uncomfortable to eat with it on, so I usually don't keep it on for extended meals." Naruto answered neutrally, "speaking of which, Hana, we should go if we want to make our reservation." Naruto lied, hoping to get out of there as fast as possible.

"Aww, are you sure you can't stay for a while?" Tsume pleaded, having quite a bit of fun seeing her daughter like this.

Hana, who had finally gotten a hold of herself agreed with Sakumo. "He's right mom, we have to go." She quickly ushered herself and Sakumo out of the house and toward the main gate.

"Feel free to come back for desert Sakumo!" Tsume called out, hoping the two would return, but not holding her breath.

-11-

Naruto and Hana resumed a normal pace after getting some distance from the Inuzuka compound. Walking side by side, they made their way to the village, but slowed as both of them realized they didn't know where they were going.

"Do we really have a reservation?" Hana asked a bit meeker than she had intended. It seemed Hana was still a bit flustered from seeing her friends true appearance.

"No, I only said that to get out of there, besides, I just found out about this a couple hours ago. Did you have any plans for tonight?" Naruto replied, curious if she put any planning into this.

Hana shifted a bit uncomfortably, aware that as the instigator of the date, it was technically her responsibility to plan something out. "I just thought we would grab dinner someplace and maybe find something to do." She trailed off at the end a bit as most of her dates had never lasted past the dinner phase.

"Alright, sounds good! What do you feel like eating tonight?" Naruto said enthusiastically, trying to cheer her up a bit and ease the both of them up.

"Well, you're the one who's been living on nothing but rations and Kami knows what for the last year. Why don't you pick? Just pick someplace not too casual and not too fancy." Hana replied, forcing herself to interact with him similar to the way she used to.

"Hmm, well I saw a hibachi place that wasn't here the last time I was in Konoha. How about we see if they have couple open seats?" Naruto suggested, as he thought about it.

"Sound great." Hana agreed, eager to at least have some sort of plan.

When they arrived at the restaurant they spoke to the hostess that was able to seat them in front of a stove and told them the chef would arrive in half an hour along with the other guests. Naruto ordered a couple cups of tea for the two of them before they each turned their attention on the menu's. The wait was a bit long, but they were able to get through it with some small talk.

Once the chef and the other guests arrived, they were able to keep the conversation light and allow themselves to be distracted with the other guests and the show the chef was putting on. Although the 'tricks' he was doing could have been easily replicated by the both of them, they enjoyed the show the civilian chef was trying to put on. When their meal was over, Naruto paid despite protests from Hana and both of them left. When Naruto suggested a walk around a nearby park, Hana agreed.

-11-

"I can't believe all you did on your training trip was practice fire jutsus." Hana declared, not fooled for an instant at Sakumo's insistence.

"Well, I mean I did other training, but that was the main focus." Naruto defending, trying to be as truthful as possible while not telling her the real reason for his trip.

"But I thought you could already do fire jutsus when I was teaching you how to be a chunin? How much more training could you possibly do that would take almost an entire year." Hana kept at it.

"Well..." Naruto hedged, deciding to at least show her something only the sandaime knew about. He concentrated on his hand, willing the flames to surround it, being especially careful not to burn the park down.

Hana watched in amazement as her date willed fire into existence without even a single hand seal. "How?"

"Actually I didn't learn a single new fire jutsu throughout my entire trip. I just trained my fire affinity further and further every day. Right now, I'm probably better at fire ninjutsu than the strongest Uchiha's in history." Naruto explained, while trying not to brag.

Hana merely stared at the fire still in Sakumo's hand. When he let it go out she tried to wrap her mind around training a single element to that degree of mastery. When she heard giggling behind her she spotted a pair of girls probably coming of work pointing and staring lustfully at Sakumo. She internally growled as she remembered this was supposed to be a date. She ended up grabbing his now fire-free hand and pulling him to resume their walk.

After a few minutes she noticed a change in her hand as she felt Sakumo's hand grip hers as well. It was only at this point that she realized that she had kept a hold of his hand when she pulled him away from their onlookers. She considered letting go as she suppressed a blush, but kept hanging on for a reason she couldn't identify.

"Hey Hana?" Sakumo suddenly interrupted her line of thought.

"Yeah?" She asked, cursing the meekness that had once again found it's way into her voice.

"What do you want out of life? I mean, not just career-wise, but what are your dreams?"

Hana, startled by this sudden question wondered what he was hoping to hear. "I... uh... why do you ask?" She tried to answer the question, but couldn't stop thinking of the hand holding hers.

"It's just... I feel like I've already accomplished a lot of my career goals and I'm not sure where to go from here." Naruto explained the thinking that had plagued him ever since making tokubetsu jonin. "I'm already a full jonin, years ahead of schedule, and I have no clue where to really go from here. I don't have much in the way of a social life and I don't have any family, so I'm just finding myself confused at where to go from here now that my career goals are near completed."

Hana listened to his words and felt an immediate sympathy for her friend. He didn't have any family and was a bit of an introvert so he didn't have many friends. "I guess outside of career goals I would like family one day, not immediately like my mother seems to think I need, but someday."

Naruto nodded as he heard her, agreeing that a family might be nice, but not quite knowing how he would manage to give what he had never received.

The two of them kept walking, holding hand's, until they found themselves walking back to the Inuzuka compound.

"Well, I would invite you in for desert, if I wasn't afraid my mother wouldn't let you leave." Hana joked.

Naruto, getting the hint that it was time for him to leave, released his hand from Hana's and made to bid her goodbye. He wondered now more than ever if this was a real date or just some deal Hana had made with her mother to get her out of her hair. "Maybe we could have lunch or something next week?" Naruto ended a bit apprehensively, trying to gauge her reaction.

Hana, suddenly feeling emptier with her hand released, looked to Sakumo's face, only to find him staring at her almost fearfully. "How about tomorrow night?" She found herself asking before she could stop herself.

"It's a date!" Naruto replied with a massive grin.

Hana felt herself blushing at the sheer happiness he seemed to exude. He looked a bit confused on what his was supposed to do right now but in the end decided to just smile and say goodbye. She felt a bit of disappointment with the ending before she waved those thoughts away. As she thought about her date tomorrow she smiled lightly before remembering what was waiting for her inside. 'Crap! When mom finds out about tomorrow she won't shut up for a month!'

-11-

AN: Hana and Naruto finally start dating! I myself am a big introvert in real life, so it's no surprise that my version Naruto is one as well. From now on he will have more interaction with other, even if it is harder for me to write.

Spoiler Alert for next chapter: Naruto will get a genin team but I am just blanking on how to write the exam Naruto is to give as jonin-sensei. I don't want to do the bell test, but can't really thing of anything else that would be appropriate. If you have any thoughts please PM or just include in a review. I would very much appreciate any ideas you guys have.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Naruto awoke in his favorite position, snuggled against his girlfriend of two years, Hana. The last two years had been somewhat boring compared to the years prior, but Naruto wouldn't trade them for anything.

He had stopped going on constant A and B-rank missions and had a chance to settle down. Apparently, once the sandaime found out he had a girlfriend, he did everything possible to make sure they were together as often as they could be, up to and including running missions together again. It wasn't perfectly smooth going, after all, relationships weren't fairy tales, but the ninja lifestyle often encouraged ninja to be honest and loving considering your next mission might be your last. It was due to this that Naruto couldn't bear to keep his secrets from Hana for long after they started dating. Within a week of their first date, he had told her the truth.

Flashback

Naruto bit into his fingernails and paced across the room for the umpteenth time. He had been looking for the opportunity to tell Hana the truth about himself for the last week and before he could work up the courage, Hana had been assigned a mission.

A chunin led genin team was bringing back a prisoner for questioning when he had escaped and injured the team. The team had made it back with no casualties, but Hana had been deployed with a team of chunin to track down and recapture the prisoner.

Rationally, Naruto knew this would be a simple mission that Hana could complete in her sleep, but he could not stop himself from worrying. Is this what he would go through for every mission she took? What would he do if something were to happen? How could he live with himself for never having told her the truth? Endless questions just like this filled his head as he continued pacing near the entrance of the Inuzuka compound.

"Hey what's with you?"

Naruto spun around from his pacing to see Hana standing just a few feet away from him with her dog triplets. She had an expression torn between confusion and amusement, probably from watching his strange behavior.

"Hana!" Naruto cried, happy to see her safe. "Are you..." Naruto started before trying to regain some of his lost sense. "How was the mission?"

"Easy," Hana said. "The guy was pretty smart, making it to a major city, but he underestimated an Inuzuka's nose."

"Wasn't he able to injure some of our ninja?" Naruto asked, still relieved she was safe.

"Just some fangirl wannabe that was stupid enough to basically hand him a weapon and let him take her hostage." Hana snorted, not having a high opinion of many of her female comrades.

Naruto nodded, having familiar experiences leading kunoichi like that. "Hey, could I talk with you about something?"

"Sure, now?" Hana responded, not really aware of the inner turmoil Naruto was currently undergoing.

"If you need to be somewhere or do anything, I can wait."

"Can I get a quick shower in first?" Hana asked

"Of course! Can you meet me at... uh... training ground 16 in an hour?" Naruto racked his brain trying to think of a place they could talk in private.

"Sure," Hana said, turning to return to the Inuzuka compound for a shower.

-12-

Naruto returned to pacing in his new location. Training ground 16 was deserted, thankfully, so it should be private enough to have this talk with Hana. A new nervousness overtook him as he now thought about all the ways his next conversation could go. 'Would she be angry? Would she look at him with the same eyes the villagers used to have?'

"Man, you're really off your game today, aren't you?" A familiar voice surprised him from behind.

Naruto, again surprised by her sudden appearance just gave a short nod before collapsing into a sitting position. He tried to begin, but every time he opened his mouth, more of the questions that had plagued his mind returned.

Hana, sensing the seriousness of the conversation, carefully took a seat across from him and said softly, "It's okay, you can tell me anything."

Naruto took one last deep breath before going for it. "I have a secret."

Hana blinked, not really understanding what he was talking about.

Naruto continued. "I... I wasn't always named Sakumo Hayashi."

At this, Hana narrowed her eyes as her ninja training started to kick in at this revelation. "What was your name before?"

"Naruto Uzumaki."

Hana stared at him, analyzing what he was saying but coming up blank. "Never heard of it."

Naruto looked up at her, doing math in his head. He supposed that she would have been very young when his name was announced, too young to remember. It also seemed that she wasn't aware of him when the village hated him, perhaps because of her clan.

"I'm a jinchuuriki."

"Again, never heard of it."

"I... I have a tailed beast sealed inside of me." Naruto eventually said.

Hana looked at him with confusion.

Naruto elaborated. "The tailed beasts can't be killed, they are beings of pure energy. They can only be sealed away. And the only thing that can successfully hold such power is a human child, a baby."

"What does that mean?" Hana asked, with a feeling of fear starting to overtake her.

"It means that the yondaime sealed the Kyuubi into me on the day I was born." Naruto said simply.

Hana stared at him with a mixture of disbelief, shock, and even a little fear.

The two of them sat in silence for almost five minutes before one of them finally broke the silence.

"Why are you telling me?"

Naruto stared at her in a bit of confusion. "We... I mean I... I couldn't not tell you. I mean... with us..."

"So why are you using a fake name?" Hana asked, trying to get him to keep talking coherently.

Naruto's eyebrow raised with a flicker of amusement. "Technically speaking, Sakumo Hayashi is my real name now, since I had it legally changed. But aside from that, when I was younger a lot of the villagers hated me because they didn't understand how a monster like the Kyuubi could be sealed into a little baby. They thought that I was the Kyuubi in human form or something. It became almost impossible to become a ninja or even lead a halfway decent life, so I changed myself."

"Why would they hate you?" Hana asked, still not getting it.

"Because I was different. People hate what's different. Just like in Kiri where the hate bloodline users because they're different, people hated me here because there was something about me they didn't understand or even feared. And eventually, they liked the idea of having someone to hate. I guess life just gets easier when you have someone to blame all your problems on."

"So why are you telling me? Why couldn't you just keep in a secret for the rest of your life and never tell anyone?" Hana asked.

"Because you matter to me." Naruto said simply. "If I really wanted to hide forever, I probably could have done that, but I didn't want to. I wanted to become a Konoha ninja, I want to be respected for who I really am one day. I want people to stop acting so... stupid."

"So, you're trying to change people's minds by becoming a good ninja first? Are you planning to reveal your birth identity?"

Naruto paused to think about that. "That was originally my plan. When I was young I thought I could heal Konoha, but it probably won't happen any time soon."

"Why not?"

"I can't tell you everything, but there is an unforeseen bump in my plan. I mean I was really young when I came up with that plan, so it's a bit on the idealistic side. And of course, my experiences since then have made me more realistic and pragmatic, so I'm not in a rush to be recognized again."

"How many people know all this?"

"Including me and you... five." Naruto answered.

Hana's brow raised in surprise. "Only three other people know who you really are?"

"I think so. The Hokage and two others I happened to be on a mission with when the truth came out."

The two of them sat, each having a different track of thought. To Naruto, it was wondering what Hana thought of him now. "So, what do you think?"

"About what?" Hana asked.

"About... me. Do you hate me now?"

Hana looked at him quizzically, noticing that his facial expression was one she hadn't seen on him before. It was a mixture of fear, regret, and an expectation of future pain. As Hana saw this, she immediately felt her insides soften as she began to understand the fear and pain that was currently infecting him right now.

"How could I hate you for something like this." Hana said sympathetically.

Naruto looked at her with a hopeful expression. "Everyone else seems to."

"I am not everyone else."

Naruto felt tears begin to leak from his eyes as he heard that. He could only nod while closing his eyes to try and stop the flow of tears. Immediately after, he felt himself experience something he had only dreamed about until now. He felt himself be drawn into a hug. At first he tensed, as he didn't know what to do, but eventually he relaxed into it.

Naruto and Hana remained that way for quite some time, drawing comfort from each other while deepening their relationship.

End Flashback

Naruto thought back to his first hug with fondness as he subconsciously drew Hana in closer. Since that day their relationship had been progressing slowly but steadily. They had continued dating with increased frequency and saw each other more and more often. Within a year, they had shared a bed together for the first time and now used any excuse to do so again.

"What are you thinking about?" Hana's voice interrupted his thoughts. He hadn't realized she had awaken.

"The first time you hugged me." Naruto answered honestly. "One of my most precious memories."

Naruto enjoyed the redness that appeared on her face as she thought back to that day.

"I thought you had to meet with the Hokage soon?" Hana said, recovering from her slight embarrassment.

"I've still got a few minutes," Naruto responded as he was in no hurry to leave his current position.

"Any idea what he wants?"

"Considering the timing, it's either a mission or he's going to give me another genin team."

Hana smirked as she remembered last year when the Hokage had tried to give her boyfriend a genin team. Naruto had freaked out and argued with the Hokage, trying to refuse before finally agreeing to test them. Unfortunately for the Hokage, the team had failed the test rather dramatically so he was spared that experience at the time.

"You should think about doing it. Who knows, you might make a good sensei?" Hana said, thinking it would be pretty funny to see him try to be a sensei.

"No way, I still have nightmares about whiny genin."

Reluctantly, Naruto eventually got up to go to the meeting. He donned his face mask and usual attire before kissing his girlfriend goodbye as he left for his meeting.

-12-

As expected, when Naruto entered the Hokage's office, he was immediately aware of the other jonin here for the same reason he was. He sighed, now able to confirm that yes, the Hokage was going to try and assign him yet another team. After a few more minutes, the last of the jonin filtered into the room and the Hokage began the meeting.

"Well, I believe most of you know why you are here. It's time to assign the genin teams and see which of them pass to become full genin. Each of you are here because you have been selected as a potential jonin sensei."

The Hokage's secretary passed out folders containing their team assignments to each of the prospective jonin. As Naruto received his, he took a quick glace at his team roster to see who he got this time. However, when he saw one of the names, he felt himself panic and feel a certain amount of dread. He looked at the Hokage to see the sandaime looking at him with a ghost of a smirk on his face. 'Damn him! He planned this.' Naruto thought furiously.

"Each of you will pick up your students after lunch and give them their final genin test either today or tomorrow. If this is your first time testing a team and would like help designing a test, please stay behind, otherwise, you are dismissed."

Naruto cast one final glare at the sandaime before leaving with the other jonin.

-12-

Naruto waited outside the academy room with the other jonin, waiting for his turn to collect his potential students. He was currently racking his brains to find a solution, but no matter what he thought of, he couldn't find a way out. When it was his turn, he sighed one last time before entering the room to call out his genin.

"Team 8 consisting of Hinata Hyuuga, Shino Aburame, and... Kiba Inuzuka, please follow me." With great reluctance he called out his girlfriend's brother's name. As they followed him to one of the academy training grounds, he wondered how on earth he could get out of this.

Naruto settled himself for introductions before turning his attention to his genin team. "Well, I suppose we should introduce ourselves. My name is Sakumo Hayashi, jonin of Konoha. I specialize in genjutsu, ninjutsu, and tracking. I like meat, my girlfriend, and being out in the wilderness. I dislike whiny people. Now each of you introduce yourselves." Naruto concluded, pointing to the girl.

"M-My name is Hinata H-Hyuuga. I-I like cinnamon buns and t-taking c-care of my s-sister. I want to m-make my c-clan proud of me." Naruto watched the girl struggle through her sentence, wondering what her speech problem was and where it came from. Naruto put it out of his mind for now as he pointed to the Aburame.

"My name is Shino Aburame. I specialize in my family jutsu. I like bugs." Naruto nodded, having worked with Aburame on occasion and knowing them to be ninja of few words. Finally Naruto pointed to the source of his dilemma.

"Yo, my name is Kiba Inuzuka and this is Akamaru." He said, holding up his dog for all to see. "I'm the best academy student and awesome at Inuzuka family taijutsu. I like Akamaru, lots of foods, and hot girls! I hate that bastard Sasuke for stealing the girls and will show him one day!"

Naruto stared at Kiba, knowing that he was not the top academy student and from what he heard from Hana, was currently behind in his clan training. He decided once again to ignore it for now and leaving them to be surprised by his next statement.

"Well, I suppose I should start out by saying that while you did pass the academy test, there is still one final exam before you officially become genin."

"WHAT!" Kiba shouted, while the other two stayed silent, but surprised.

"Yep." Naruto said. "The academy test was to show that you completed the first of your training. The test I give you is where you prove you are ready to go out into the field and be a real ninja. If you fail this, you will be sent back to the academy for more training."

"But we..." Kiba started before returning to his default personality. "No, you know what? We'll pass your test no problem! Let's go!" He stood up and made to take the test right now.

"Hold your horses kid." Naruto calmed the excitable genin down. "The test will take place tomorrow to give me time to set it up. Meet me at the eastern entrance to the administration building tomorrow morning at 9 am. Until then, I suggest you prepare yourselves for anything." Naruto shunshined away to return to Hana, to see if she would mind it if he failed her brother.

-12-

"Hahahaha... You got Kiba's team!" Hana laughed so loudly that the other patrons of the restaurant couldn't help but look at them. Naruto motioned her to quiet down both to spare his embarrassment from the onlookers and to stop her from laughing at his circumstances. It didn't work very well.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. The Hokage trapped me. If I fail him, I get in trouble with your family. If I don't, I have to spend the next year of my life with whiny genin."

After a few more moments of loud laughter Hana finally calmed down a little. "Seriously though, you can't fail your team just because you don't want them."

"No, but I can make a test they can't pass." Naruto countered.

"Naruto," Hana warned in a low and dangerous tone.

"Okay, then I can make a hard test they probably won't pass." Naruto amended.

His girlfriend still looked at him with slightly dangerous eyes.

"Fine! I'll make a test that they at least have a shot at passing."

-12-

Naruto had to call in a favor from Ibiki to help him assemble his test, but in the end he was pretty happy. He knew that jonin relied on different testing method of their own choosing to test genin. These tests often ranged from easy scavenger hunts to insane teamwork challenges that were almost impossible to complete. Despite what he had told Hana, he never did like these approaches and felt that every genin deserved a chance to become a ninja, regardless of how the jonin sensei thought about the prospect.

In his last test, he drew a team that was relatively unskilled and was completely unwilling to work together to pass even the easiest challenge he had set forth. Now he was going to try something a little more difficult and complicated, but achievable if the team worked together and used their heads.

It took him quite a few clones and much of the night to set it up, but when it was completed, he thought that without the threat of being demoted from genin, it would be pretty fun. He arrived at the location early in the morning to perform one final checkup to make sure everything had been set up properly, before heading out to lead his team to their test.

"Good morning kids!" He said a bit enthusiastically when he arrived at the meeting spot and saw his potential team waiting for him.

The three nervously returned his greetings, albeit with less enthusiasm.

"I have your test all set up if you want to follow me." Naruto turned as he said this and led them on a five minute walk to an industrial part of town. He stopped at a small warehouse that was used for storage by the intelligence department for non-classified materials and led his students inside. He navigated them to a smaller section in back where his locked room was located.

"Alright, we're here. Behind this door lies a room. I am going to lock you inside the room and you will have to get out. There are a number of rules for this task, starting with the fact that you cannot force your way out of the room or break anything inside. In order to exit, you must collect a key from inside the room. One key will allow one person and only one person to leave the room. There are three keys inside total. As you can probably guess, the goal of the test is to find a key and leave the room before the time runs out. Only those that find a key and make it out will pass. One last rule, you must find at least two of the keys in order to be able to leave." Naruto explained his complicated test.

"What is the time limit?" Shino asked stoically, although a perceptive person could hear traces of worry in his voice.

"I won't tell you exactly how much time you have, but I will tell you that you have at least one hour and at most three hours to complete the task." Naruto answered.

"And I assume the keys will be hidden or hard to get to?" Shino continued.

"There are riddles and puzzles you will need to solve, often times with teamwork." Naruto answered again.

Shino nodded, expecting as much. Hinata looked silent and afraid, while Kiba looked like an interesting mix of determined and panicked, probably due to the lack of physical challenges.

"Alright then, if there are no further questions, time will start as soon as you enter." Naruto opened the door and ushered them inside.

-12-

The three children and one dog entered the room with apprehension. None of them were quite sure what to expect and had never done anything like this. Inside the room were random pieces of furniture, fake plants, paintings, random toys, and other various objects. The room wasn't that big, but the multitude of strange objects confused the young genin.

"What are we suppose to do now?" Kiba said as he spun around in a circle, trying to figure out where a key could be.

"Let's all take a look around the room. Hayashi-sensei said there were riddles and puzzles that needed to be solved, so let's find them." Shino, trying to keep a rational mind, said.

Hinata nodded, activated her byakugan to search the room. "T-There are p-parts o-of the room that a-are i-invisible to m-my eyes." She said in a surprised voice, knowing that materials of that nature were for the most part kept secret for the Hyuuga clan's protection.

"Do you see anything?" Shino asked.

"Wait... U-Under the t-table." Hinata pointed to a medium sized table in the middle of the room. She moved to turn it over to discover their first clue written on the bottom.

 _Drawer Combination: 3-6-5-8_

Upon discovering the clue, the three genin spread around the room to find the drawer. Within a few seconds, Shino came upon a cabinet with the drawers facing the wall. Upon alerting the others, Kiba and Shino turned the cabinet around to reveal four drawers with combination locks. They quickly entered the correct code in only to discover that it only worked on one of the drawers. Inside the one drawer that would open, they found a box.

The box, as ordinary as could be was made of cardboard and was approximately a foot long and wide, and about 3 inches tall. Inside were hundreds of jigsaw pieces.

"Well, I wonder what we have to do now?" Kiba said rather sarcastically.

Hinata gave a weak smile more out of politeness while Shino carefully scooped the pieces out onto the floor. The three started sorting the pieces into edges and colors. After only a minute of sorting however, they came across an oddity.

"Another corner piece." Kiba called out enthusiastically as he threw it in the edge pile.

"Wait, corner?" Shino asked.

"Yeah." Kiba said confused, as he picked up the corner piece again to show it to his teammate. "What's wrong with that?"

"The problem is that this is that I have already found four corner pieces." Shino replied.

"I-I-I have found a c-couple as well." Hinata said quietly.

The three sat and pondered this oddity for a while before Shino once again took the lead. "Well, either there are extra pieces or this is more than one puzzle. For now, let's finish sorting and each pick a section to work on. Perhaps it will become clearer in time."

Each of the genin started working on a section. Surprisingly, Hinata was the most effective at doing puzzles. It seemed that unlike the outdoor oriented Kiba or the cold logical Shino, she was used to passing the time on her own and had completed many puzzles beforehand. In the end, Hinata assembled a 100 piece picture of a snowman. She moved on to help Kiba, who seemed to be the worst at puzzles and combined were able to shortly finish a picture of a house. The last puzzle was of a tiger.

While the last puzzle was still being assembled, both Hinata and Kiba gazed at the completed puzzles looking for any sign of a clue, but were unable to find anything. It was only when Shino completed the final puzzle that they learned why. It seems that there were three extra pieces that did not fit in any of the puzzles.

"Let's see... we have an all white piece, a picture of a pot, and a piece with the word 'flower' on it." Shino said logically, trying to gain some insight by saying it out loud. "Could we be looking for a white pot or a white flower?"

The three looked around the room and immediately spotted the fake flowers, for which their was only one white. The three crowded around the flowers, looking at the white one with intensity.

"W-What now?" Hinata asked.

"Well, I suppose we look under the dirt." Kiba said as he grabbed the potted flower and started pulling out the dirt and spreading it out among the other pots. Soon, he came upon something metal inside and pulled out the first of the three keys.

"Ha, found one!" Kiba cried out.

Indeed, Kiba had pulled out one of the keys to exit the room, but that was not the only thing he unearthed. Attached to the key by a piece of string was a simple key chain displaying another combination.

 _8-8-5-2_

They entered the combination into the cabinet and again unlocking their next challenge. Inside was a wheel that looked like it was meant to be inserted somewhere and turned.

The three once again spread around trying to locate what this was to be used for and where it should go. After a few minutes of not finding anything, they grow discouraged.

"Dammit, what the hell does this do?" Kiba shouted, frustrated in his efforts.

"Let's think about this logically. The screw coming out the back of this indicates that this is meant to turn something, further evidenced by the shape of the wheel. The wheel itself is a foot wide, so it must be something it can fit into." Shino kept everyone as calm as he could, knowing that panic was no way to solve a problem.

Although his speech did calm Kiba down a bit, it did nothing to help the situation they were in. Eventually, Kiba grabbed the wheel like object and started investigating it on his own. He gripped it hard and knocked his hand against it to see it it was hollow or not.

"Careful." Shino warned, "if we break it, we fail the test."

Kiba frowned at that statement, as he was tempted to do just that. Still, he kept grasping it and trying to reveal another clue without breaking it.

"Wait." Hinata said in a very quiet voice. It was so quiet that Kiba with all his struggling didn't hear her.

Shino however, did. "You have an idea Hinata-san?"

Hinata looked nervous at being addressed, but motioned for Kiba to give her the wheel. Upon doing so, she looked at it strangely for a few seconds before looking around the room. Upon not seeing anything she could use for her purpose, she slipped the wheel under her coat and poked her head in to see whether she had observed correctly.

"What are you doing." Kiba asked, put off by her bizarre behavior.

"T-The w-wheel glows in the d-dark."

Shino, upon hearing this, moved over to the doorway and immediately flicked off the light switch. The room descended into darkness, as there were no windows or other light sources.

Hinata, upon seeing what her teammate was doing, pulled out the wheel and examined it when the lights went out. As she had said, the wheel glowed in the dark, providing a source of light in an otherwise dark room.

"There!" Kiba cried, pointing to a spot on the wall.

Though it was still dark, both Hinata and Shino were able to spot the general direction of where Kiba was pointing and were able to see the spot on the wall. Indeed, illuminated just like the wheel and with the same color, was a single circle on the wall, barely an inch in diameter.

Upon investigating, alternating with the light on and off, they found that the spot on the wall could be removed to reveal a hole in which the wheel could be inserted. When Hinata placed the wheel in place and started to turn it, the three genin were shocked when a portion of the wall started to rise and reveal a hidden room.

When the wheel had been fully turned, Kiba and Shino went in to investigate. Unfortunately, the wheel had to be held in place, so Hinata had to stand and hold the door open.

Inside was a blank room with nothing inside.

"What the hell? This is just a dead end. Wait... maybe we need to turn off the lights again." Kiba declared before rushing off to turn off the lights.

"Anything?" Kiba asked as he turned off the lights.

"Nothing." Shino responded, sounded slightly dejected.

Shino exited the room and Kiba returned from the light switch. Hinata, in the mean time, allowed the door to lower so she would not have to hold it open.

"What now?" Kiba asked.

The other two didn't know what to say. Eventually, after a few minutes had passed, Hinata worked up the nerve to quietly ask if she could see the room while one of the others held the door open.

The repeated the previous actions, only this time Kiba open the door for them. As the door was opening, Hinata ducked in and took a look around the room, only to notice something in the corner of her eye.

"Wait." Hinata said.

As Shino walked in the room, he took a look around to see if something had changed, only to see nothing. "I don't see anything."

"There was s-something in here when I first entered, but it's g-gone now." Hinata said.

Shino thought about what she had said, almost ready to dismiss her when he had a thought. "Kiba, close the door for a minute, then open it again."

Kiba did as he was asked, albeit with a little grumbling at being ordered.

When the door closed, it seems as though a window opened to reveal the purpose of the room. When the door was opened, the window was closed. 'Sneaky.' Shino thought.

When the window was open, they discovered that it revealed a maze that was built vertically into the wall between the two rooms. On this side they could see the maze in entirety and at the end was a very visible, but unreachable, key.

"Kiba, open the door!" Shino called, after getting a good look at the maze he had a good idea what they were supposed to do.

As the door opened, Shino and Hinata both exited and alerted Kiba to what they had discovered. Shino made his way over to the wall that held the other side of the maze. He quickly discovered a small pole sticking out of the wall here and a small gap in the wall that provided an entrance to the maze. It was possible that he might be able to fill the maze with his bugs, but it was unlikely that they could retrieve the key on their own.

"Hinata, can you see the maze with your byakugan?" Shino asked.

Hinata briefly went through her hand seals to activate her blood limit. After staring for a few seconds, she shook her head in the negative. As she was about to disable her bloodline, she seemed to notice something else. "I-I can't see the m-maze itself, but I c-can see around the maze to the other r-room. I-If someone s-stands there and p-points in the r-right direction, I-I think I can follow."

Shino listened to all of this before nodding in confirmation. "Okay, let me take one last look at the other side. Kiba?"

At this, Kiba understood that he would be in charge of opening the door. Growling lightly at the chore he was forced to do, he nonetheless opened the door and closed it after Shino had gone in.

After inspecting the maze more carefully he discovered that the small pole on the other side was connected to a magnet on this side. So that when Hinata navigated the maze to the key, it would stick to the magnet and she could guide it back to the entrance of the maze. Nodding in confirmation at the plan, Shino began tracing the maze to find the correct/shortest path to the key. After finding it, he quickly committed it to memory.

Shino exited the room after banging on the door to let Kiba know to open the door. After relaying his discoveries to the rest of the team they began their plan. Shino stood in room, just off to the side of the maze, pointing in the direction of where Hinata should go in the maze. Hinata followed his directions, but had to take it slowly in order to navigate the maze correctly. The two made plenty of mistakes at first, but thanks to Shino, always made it back to the correct path.

After twelve minutes, they were rewarded with the key being stuck to the magnet. After another ten minutes, Hinata was able to pull out the key from the gap in the wall. The team had collected their second key.

"Okay! Second key. Woo!" Kiba declared loudly.

Hinata held the second key protectively as she motioned for Kiba to let their teammate out.

Kiba almost began opening the door when he paused. 'We have two of the keys right now and who knows how much time left. If me and Hinata leave now, we're guaranteed to win.' Kiba thought. He was about to relay his plan to Hinata when he heard a growl come from behind. It appeared as though Akamaru had worked out what he was thinking of doing and had something to say regarding that. At that point, Kiba decided just to keep his mouth shut and open the door for Shino.

As Shino exited the room, he glared briefly at Kiba, not that anyone could really tell, before moving over to the key. After examining it, he discovered a similar string of four numbers and began entering them into the remaining two drawers. The first drawer he tried opened to reveal an odd looking circle of paper covered in letters, a note card with some sort of alphabetic code on it, some construction paper, and a pair of scissors. He brought everything out and placed it on the table for his other teammates to see.

The three gathered around the odd materials trying to figure out the purpose of the objects. The construction paper was pretty ordinary and it was a normal pair of scissors, so it seemed to come down to the circle of paper. Around the edge of the circle was a complete alphabet and inside the circle was the same alphabet in both random order and placement within the interior.

Shino, having recognized this from the academy lessons, realized that the note card must be an encrypted message and the circle was the cipher to figure out what the message was. Unfortunately, they were missing a large piece of the cipher.

"What is it?" Kiba asked, completely lost at what he was seeing.

"It's an encrypted message." Shino said before holding up the circle of paper to show his teammates. "This is supposed to be the cipher to figure it out, but there is a piece missing. There should be some sort of overlay that goes on top. I believe it should be a circle of paper with holes in the middle and a notch on the edge of the circle. You find the letter around the edge and place the notch over it, then only one letter from the middle should be visible. That's how we decode the message."

Kiba still looked a bit confused but Hinata nodded along.

"A-Any i-idea where the m-missing p-piece is?" Hinata asked

Shino shook his head in the negative.

Hinata once again activated her byakugan to begin looking around the room for something that matched. Shino started inspecting the furniture for anything hidden that might look like what they were searching for. Even Akamaru was examining the room from his own unique perspective. Kiba started looking in random places, not really sure exactly what he was suppose to be looking for, but decided to keep his search close to the keys in case he got some indication that time was running out.

After five minutes of searching, no one had found anything and they had searched most of the room. Shino, who was by now, the default leader at solving these intellectual exercises, called his teammates over so they could discuss a new strategy.

"I'm not quite sure where we are suppose to find the design of the overlay, but due to the fact that we got construction paper and scissors, I assume we have to make one. Anyone have any ideas on how." Shino asked the others, not coming up with it himself.

Kiba shook his head in the negative, starting to at least figure out what his teammate was talking about a little, but still having no idea where to look.

Hinata kept her eyes activated in order to try and spot something, but no matter where she looked, could not find anything.

The three eventually went back to searching but as more time passed, they began to get more and more frustrated. Since they could leave the room now that they had two keys, the pressure was mounting to secure their place on the team and leave the others to fight over the remaining key.

Kiba, who at this point was facing a dilemma. Torn between taking a key and running or trying to help the others, he didn't know what to do. He knew that he could probably get a key and get out before his teammates realized what was going on, but he hadn't done much to solve the clues so far and wasn't sure if he could turn his back on his clan's most valuable trait, loyalty.

'Think Kiba.' He mentally berated himself. 'You're supposed to be the best tracker clan in the village and you can't even find something in the middle of a room! Okay, what did mom say...' Kiba thought about all the lessons his mother and sister had given him until now, trying to remember something that would help him. 'Wait, some times the best way to hide something is in plain sight! That was a lesson his mother had taught him.' Kiba quickly looked around the room and tried to analyze the best way to hide something like what Shino had described. He let his eyes fall across the room, slowly deciding whether he could or would hide a design in anything that his eyes landed on.

After taking inventory of the room, he finally set his eyes upon the pictures on the wall. As he walked over he could see a number of landscapes, a painting of the four Hokage's, and various... wait. "Shino! Hinata! There!" Kiba shouted, pointing at one of the paintings.

The two others quickly came over to find Kiba pointing at a painting of all four Hokage's standing together. Kiba was pointing particularly at the Nidaime Hokage. On the front of his shirt was a design shaped exactly like what they were looking for.

Shino slapped Kiba on the back, showing a rare sign of emotion, to show how relieved he was to find the clue. He quickly memorized the shaped before deciding to just take the painting off the wall so they could copy it as exactly as possible. After carefully tracing out the cuts they would have to make, knowing that any deviation would yield incorrect results, they began cutting in order to make their overlay.

Shino then used the overlay as Hinata both called out the letters and took down the results as Shino responded. The first two words were 'ninety' and 'seventeen.' Suspecting what theses were, Shino directed Kiba to enter them into the last drawer before moving on to decode the remainder of the message.

As Kiba returned with folded paper, he quickly unfolded it in front of the others to reveal a seal. Before either Shino or Hinata paid too much attention to it, they finished decoding the message.

"Well?" Kiba asked Hinata, who was staring at the results.

"I-It say's _'needs power of three'_ " Hinata read the results to her teammates.

"Power of three? What's that suppose to mean?" Kiba asked, though if he was asking his teammates or just thinking out loud was anyone's guess.

Shino silently considered the message while studying the seal. He had a bit of sealing knowledge himself, and the inner rings looked somewhat similar to an ordinary storage seal. 'Power of three, could it be that simple?'

"I have a hypothesis." Shino declared, alerting his teammates that he had a theory. "The inner part of the seal looks like a storage seal. If I had to guess, the third key is in the seal and we need to activate the seal to get it out. I believe the message is referring to the point that we need to all power the seal together in order for it to work properly. In other words, the three of us need to power the seal together."

The other two considered what Shino had said. Neither of them had any real sealing experience and couldn't be counted on to analyze the seal itself. They had no other ideas and time could be running out any moment now.

"Let's do it!" Kiba declared, all ready for a high risk high reward type situation.

Hinata paused for a moment before nodding her head. "How do we do it?" She asked her bug infested teammate.

Shino inspected the seal closely and found three points around the outer seal array. "Each of us will place a finger on one of the points here..." Shino said, pointing out each of the dots, "...and channel chakra through that finger at the same time. The seal should recognize that three different chakra signatures are powering it and release the key.

Immediately Kiba placed his right hand index finger on the point closest to him. Hinata followed shortly afterward. Shino paused briefly, allowing his mind to consider any other possibility for this particular puzzle before placing his own finger on the remaining point.

"On three, channel your chakra." Shino declared.

Kiba and Hinata both nodded.

"One... Two... Three!" Shino counted out in a steady but firm voice.

When Shino called out three, each of the genin began channeling their chakra. As soon as chakra was added, Team 8 was rewarded with the appearance of their third and final key.

-12-

Naruto waited out in the hallway, meditating and practicing his limited Yamanaka mind techniques. He had kept up the training from when he studied with Tetsuya Yamanaka and although he was no expert, he had definitely become more comfortable and more familiar with his own mind. He was not sure how his mind would fair against real intrusion or tampering, but he figured every little bit helped.

As he waited for the appearance of his team, he wondered how many of them would exit. He had not made it too difficult and had definitely made the last key easier to get than he had originally planned. He wanted to give them a fair chance at passing, but couldn't help but add some pressure to tempt them into a failing grade.

After two hours, the door opened and all three genin walked out. Naruto internally frowned at this before asking them to show them the keys. When each of them handed him a key, he grimaced when he inspected them and found them to be genuine.

"Alright, let's go back inside and sit down." Naruto said as he led the genin back inside the room. He took a brief look around the room to make sure that nothing was damaged, so he would have a reason to disqualify them, but everything seemed to be intact. After the three genin were seated on the couch and he had taken one of the chairs he spoke to them. "Well, I suppose congratulations are in order. You have all passed the final test and are now full genin of team eight."

As he said that last bit, Kiba let out a loud cheer, Hinata smiled as brightly as she was capable of, and Shino just nodded.

"Why don't you tell me how the test went." Naruto half asked and half ordered.

The genin briefly explained how they found the first key and Naruto nodded along, fully expecting them to get that one at the very least. When they described the challenges of the second key, Naruto could see that all three of them understood the importance that teamwork had in completing that challenge.

When they got to the third key, they described what happened, but had some questions in regard to the final challenge.

"What would have happened if we couldn't find the overlay for the cipher?" Shino asked calmly. "I doubt that I would have noticed it if Kiba hadn't seen it. Would we have failed?"

The other two genin looked at him, recalling the frustration they felt in searching for that particular clue.

"Well, I suppose that in order to answer that question I should reveal that I was lying a bit when I told you the rules." Naruto started, already seeing the confusion and slight anger in the faces of his new subordinates. "I would have failed your team if you had found none of the keys or only one key, if you damaged the contents of the room in order to get a key, and lastly and most importantly if any of you had left the room with anything less than a full team."

When Kiba heard that last part, he paled considerably.

"I intentionally made the last key difficult in order to tempt some of you into leaving a teammate behind. The second key had shown you that teamwork was necessary in order to complete the challenge and would almost certainly be needed in locating the final key. If you had abandoned a teammate in that sort of situation I would have failed you on the spot. If you had only managed to collect two keys and run out of time trying to locate the third together, I would have allowed you to pass."

Shino and Hinata looked noticeably relieved at this while Kiba looked a bit miserable.

"You should also consider yourselves fortunate." Naruto added, "I originally made finding the third key even more difficult, but my girlfriend would have been quite angry with me if I had done that. Also, I'd like to point out a small clue that you may have missed. It sounds like you recognized the cipher required to figure out the clue so my question to you is... who invented that particular cipher?"

"Let me guess, the nidaime?" Kiba said a bit sarcastically.

"Yep," Naruto said, "he invented quite a few of the ciphers and encryption methods that Konoha ninja still use to this very day."

Naruto looked at each of his genin, confirming in his head that he was now a jonin-sensei. "I've only tested one other team like this and they ended up fighting each other over who would get the first key that they were unable to cooperate in order to get any others. This test shows the importance of critical thinking, teamwork, and keeping your cool. Those are probably the three most important values I look for in genin, it would be my honor to train each of you."

-12-

After dismissing his new genin team, Naruto made his way over to the Hokage's office to report his acceptance of the team. As expected, the Hokage looked particularly smug at the prospect which made Naruto determined to pay him back somehow. With the next year promising to be nothing but D and C-ranks, he would have a lot of time to plan. After leaving, he felt determined to find Hana, despite the fact that she would be unbearable when she heard the news.

Although Hana was indeed the way he thought she would be, she more than made up for it that night. After an hour of passionate love making, Hana made her way back home, unfortunately not able to spend the night with him.

Naruto sat at his table late at night, making a plan for how the next few weeks should go. He would have to better understand the current skills and physical levels of his subordinates, so tests would be in order. Then he would need to begin both individual and teamwork training, not to mention take a few D-rank missions in between. Additionally, because these were children of the clan leaders, he would be expected to meet with each of their parents to introduce himself.

He knew that like Hana, Tsume would be a bit unbearable now that he was teaching her son, but the meeting would be pretty informal. He supposed that the Aburame's would probably be short and quick, due to their stoic personalities. The real problem would the Hyuuga clan. He would probably need to make an appointment, dress appropriately, review his manners, and act like they were superior in every way. He sighed just thinking about it.

-12-

Naruto arrived early at their training ground, mentally preparing for what it would be like to teach genin. As his new genin started to filter in one by one they sat and waited patiently for everyone to arrive.

Kiba, the last member to arrive burst in to the training ground with his faithful puppy in tow. "Hey sensei! Hey Hinata-chan, Shino!"

Shino nodded politely and Hinata murmured something that sounded like "good morning."

"So what are we doing today? Our first mission?" Kiba asked excitedly.

"No." Naruto said patiently. "Today I will be evaluating your current physical and skill levels to decide what training you need to do in the future."

"Cool! Let's go!" Kiba yelled.

Naruto sighed yet again deciding between reprimanding him for his shouting or keeping silent. In the end he decided that a little exuberance was warranted and didn't want him to lose the drive. "Alright Kiba, you can go first. First I will test your taijutsu, strength, and speed. Come at me with full power." Naruto got into a light stance, ready to analyze his loud student.

As expected, Kiba charged at him with Akamaru following. Naruto batted his punches and kicks away, noting that while Kiba did have pretty good speed and strength for a genin, it was wild and uncontrolled. Naruto and Kiba kept this up for the next couple minutes, but while Kiba showed he had good stamina and endurance, he also showed that he had no other strategy.

"Enough." Naruto eventually declared. "Shino-san, you're up."

The silent Aburame stepped up to show his skills to his new sensei. While he didn't use the insect justus that his clan was world renown for, he did manage to show excellent genin level taijutsu. He was calm and patient in his strikes and while not managing to do much damage against a jonin, did show potential for the future.

"Good job, Shino-san." Naruto said, calling an end to the fight. "Hinata-san, your turn."

The girl nervously made her was to him and got into a shaky stance that emphasized her attitude. When she made no move to attack, Naruto began the spar himself. Although he was attacking with less speed and strength than the two boys, Hinata seemed to only just barely defend herself. Naruto began to get frustrated by Hinata's skills, especially since she was only defending when he purposefully left blatant openings for her to attack.

"Stop. We will work on your taijutsu in the future Hinata-san." Naruto said while trying to hide his disappointment.

Hinata seemed to pick up on it anyway if the way she hung her head was any indication.

"Alright, let's start with some chakra control training for our first training exercise. Are any of you familiar with the surface clinging exercise or as it's commonly known the tree climbing exercise?"

Hinata shakily raised her hand, despite the fact that it looked like she would rather to anything else but draw attention to herself. Chakra control was necessary for her clan's taijutsu style, so she had been taught quite a few exercises before her clan had stopped training her.

"Very well Hinata-san, why don't you show your two teammates the exercise." Naruto said while pointing to a tree.

Hinata slowly made her way over to the tree, made the ram seal, and walked up the vertical surface of the tree. Kiba started freaking out at the seemingly impossible feat, whereas Shino just adjusted his sunglasses.

"Excellent job Hinata." Naruto praised his female student as she started blushing, clearly not used to being complimented. "As you can see, Hinata is using chakra to stick her feet to the surface of the tree. If you use too little chakra, you will just slide down the tree, if you use too much chakra, you will be blasted off. The key is to find the exact amount, which makes it an excellent chakra training exercise, as well as a very useful jutsu for the field. Now each of you try." Naruto said while pointing to two adjacent trees.

"No problem!" Kiba said as ran to the tree. As Naruto expected, Kiba did not have enough chakra emitting from his feet and promptly slid down the tree. Shino on the other hand approached the tree slowly and seemed to try the exercise one step at a time.

Naruto nodded at the two of them as the continued to practice, neither one giving up or showing and discouragement. Hinata on the other hand had seemingly faded into the background and was trying her best to remain unnoticed.

Naruto motioned her to come to him and she reluctantly approached. "Why don't we try taijutsu one more time while your teammates are working on the exercise. This time, I want you to focus on attacking me."

Hinata's eyes widened as she gulped in fear of the prospect. She reentered her shaky stance and waited the absolute longest time before making a move to attack. As expected, it was slow, off target, and had absolutely no conviction whatsoever. Naruto decided to just back away a bit and let her attack again. Perhaps if she got into a rhythm, she could improve.

After an hour of this, Naruto called an end to the exercise for all three of them. "Very well, serious training will start tomorrow and we will begin to take D-rank missions the following week. Until then, I have a bit of homework for you."

Kiba groaned. "Homework! That was supposed to be over with when we graduated from the academy."

Naruto grinned. "This should be easy. I want you to make a list of realistic goals of things you want to achieve as both genin and your career overall."

Shino nodded at the simple assignment while Hinata showed a bit of fear at the idea. Kiba only looked confused at why they would even bother.

"I would also like to meet with one of your parents in the next week, so I would like Shino-san and Hinata-san to ask your parents when a good time to meet with them would be."

Shino and Hinata both nodded at the request, again Hinata looked fearful at the prospect.

"Why not me?" Kiba asked.

"I already know your mom so we can just do that now. Until then, dismissed. Get working on your lists and set up a time for me to meet your parents. Meet me here same time tomorrow. Come on Kiba." Naruto motioned for Kiba to follow him to his clan compound.

-12-

As expected, Tsume was almost as amused as her daughter was at the idea of him being her son's sensei. While she didn't know about his reluctance to take a team, she seemed to pick up that it wasn't exactly what he expected. While meeting with the Inuzuka clan head wasn't strictly necessary due to the relationship he had with her daughter, he was hoping that she had some advice to give him for his future meetings.

"I was hoping that you could give me some advice on meeting with the Aburame and the Hyuuga family heads." Naruto explained to her.

"Well, I suppose I could give you a few hints for a price." Tsume responded.

"What kind of price?" Naruto asked suspiciously.

"How about a ring for my daughter?"

Naruto just glared at Tsume, seeing that she was up to her usual tricks again.

"Alright, alright, just joking... kind of." Tsume responded. "Shibi is an alright guy, just like his son. The meeting won't last long and you'll be out the door before you know it. Hiashi on the other hand... well... he might be a problem."

"Well, that's what I figured. Any tips?" Naruto asked, already suspecting all the information she had given so far.

"I guess all I can say is be polite and get there early. Hiashi likes to throw his weight around and be the most important person in the room."

"Yeah, I heard he was a real stick in the mud." Naruto said.

"Stick in the mud? More like stick the in place his mud comes from." Tsume replied, laughing at her own cleverness.

Naruto gave a few chuckles, although mostly to be polite. "Anything else?"

"Well... if you married my daughter before the meeting he would probably be more polite seeing as how you'd be the son-in-law of a clan head."

Naruto just sighed, seeing as she was now back to this.

-12-

Shino came through as the very next day he met with the clan head of the Aburame clan. As expected, the meeting merely consisted of Naruto introducing himself (as Hayashi Sakumo), discussing his training plans, and then being escorted out.

Hinata said that she mentioned the meeting request to her father, but no meeting was scheduled yet. It was a few days before the clan head finally agreed to speak with him and kept him waiting almost half an hour past the agreed upon meeting time.

"Hyuuga-sama, thank you for meeting with me to discuss your daughter's placement on my team. I was hoping I could use this meeting as an opportunity to introduce myself and discuss what I had in mind for training your daughter."

Hiashi Hyuuga merely stared at him with a blank expression combined with a minor glare. "I do not care what you do with the girl, she is an embarrassment to the Hyuuga family."

Naruto blinked at the statement while turning to head to the doorway, spotting the visible form of Hinata just outside the door, well within earshot.

"You don't..." Naruto started before silencing himself as the Hyuuga head turned away from him to resume some of his paperwork.

"Well... as she is a part of your clan, may I ask what days and times you or other Hyuuga's will be training her in your clan jutsu's, so that I may plan my own training schedule accordingly."

"She does not receive our training. She is not good enough. You may do whatever you want with her, she is unworthy of real training." The Hyuuga clan head said, back still turned to Naruto.

Naruto held his tongue, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to see how the Hyuuga fared against him. "Very well, I understand. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, I will try to keep her out of your clan's way." He gave a bow to the clan head and made his way out. "Come Hinata-san, let us return to our training ground.

-12

As Naruto looked back at the girl following him, he could see that she was fighting tears. 'Man, what a dick,' he thought. Indeed, Naruto wondered if he hadn't been the clan head whether he would be as unpleasant as he was during their meeting. At least he had kept his cool and managed to get a prize that the clan head probably didn't realize he had given.

"Hinata-san, I apologize for what you had to hear during that conversation."

"T-T-That's okay, Hayashi-s-sensei. I'm u-u-used to it." Hinata replied quietly.

"Have you completed your list?"

Hinata looked at him for a moment before taking out a folded piece of paper and handing it to her sensei.

Naruto unfolded and looked at the paper to see only two things listed. 'Get better at jyuuken and earn her clan's respect.'

Naruto frowned at this, knowing that if she continued along the path as she currently was, she would never achieve her goals.

"No, redo it." Naruto said shortly.

Hinata looked at her new sensei in almost shock as the tears in her eyes threatened to unleash with one more even slightly harsh word. "W-W-What d-d-do you m-mean s-sensei?"

"I have no skill with the jyuuken and your clan is refusing to train you. Getting better at the jyuuken is an almost impossible goal to achieve as a genin. Earning your families respect is a meaningless goal because it provides no direction whatsoever." Naruto explained as honestly and bluntly as he could. In fact, now that he thought about it, he changed direction of the way they were walking and headed to the genin library. "We are going to the genin library. I want you to look for subjects that you find interesting that you want to learn. Anything that you find interesting that you might think suits you, add it to the list."

"B-But sensei... I-I mean w-we..." Hinata started.

"Yes?" Naruto said as he stopped and turned to look at her.

"H-H-Hyuugas aren't, I m-mean, I..."

"Hyuuga's are forbidden from studying anything except jyuuken and clan approved jutsu, normally only reserved for main branch members?" Naruto interjected with what he guessed she was trying to say.

Hinata nodded.

"Your father has excluded you from Hyuuga training and given complete authority of your training to me. I am ordering you to study and train the way I tell you to." Naruto ordered, reminding her of what her father had said. He knelt down and tried to pacify her after hearing this brutal truth. "If you aren't suited for Hyuuga training, I will help you find a training that you are suited for. Becoming strong in your own way is the best chance you have for earning the respect of your clan."

Hinata stared at him, internally debating whether that last statement could ever be true. Hope is the only thing that kept her going since her mother had died and her sensei was talking about giving up the jyuuken and trying something completely new.

"I can't promise that everything will work out, but I can promise that trying something new will give you a better chance at finding something your clan can be proud of you for." Naruto stated.

Hinata nodded slowly, still unsure of whether this would end well or not.

-12-

After reviewing the lists of his other students, Naruto gave advice and eventually sent them to the genin library as well to research realistic things they wanted to achieve as genin. When they came back, Shino had a respectable list of trap making, basic fuinjutsu, and advanced tactics. Kiba predictably went straight for any taijutsu and ninjutsu that he could find, but Naruto eventually accepted his choices, while internally reminding himself to talk with his mother.

Hinata eventually came back saying that she wanted to learn medical jutsu, along with a few other fields. Naruto smirked, as the idea that helping and healing people probably agreed with his gentle student. He made a mental note to introduce Hinata to his girlfriend and see if she could tutor her a bit.

During this time, Naruto also began training them in earnest. Every morning of the first week, he would lead them out of the walls of Konoha and take them on a grueling trip around Konoha. Each day, they went a little further away from Konoha, so that their trip would be longer. Naruto refused to have a slow team that needed to stop every few minutes like so many of the genin he had before, so he pushed his students hard.

In the afternoon's he would help them with whatever field they had taken an interest in. He had already taught Shino how to make a sealing scroll and Kiba a D-rank fire ball jutsu. Little Hinata spent the time studying anatomy books under the shade of Konoha's mighty trees.

After the first week ended, Naruto decided to get started on taking their first D-rank. For some bizarre reason, the Hokage wanted to be the one to hand out these, probably to ingratiate himself to the large number of clan heirs that seemed to have graduated this year.

"Ah, Team 8. Sakumo, how are your genin team treating you." The sandaime began, amused at the situation before him.

"Fine, Hokage-sama." Naruto answered in a droning voice. "We're here for our first D-rank mission."

"Good, good." The Hokage said as his sorted the scrolls on the desk.

Naruto couldn't help but see that the Hokage's smirk had widened and felt a chill in the air.

"Ah, here's one. It seems that a noblewoman has lost her pet cat. Since this is a tracking team, you should have little trouble tracking it down and retrieving it." The Hokage said in a suspiciously casual voice.

Naruto, having forewarned his team on what to expect from D-ranks, watched as they agreed with the Hokage's assessment of the situation. Reluctantly, Naruto ignored the signs of impending doom and accepted the mission.

-12-

AN: Well, as you can see, I went in a different direction when it came to the genin exam. I think it's pretty original, despite the fact that it is more complicated than a test of this nature would probably be. If I hadn't already written that section at the time, I probably would have picked **Draco77** 's suggestion of: _Genjutsu test based on the 3 monkeys see, say, and hear no evil. where he uses genjutsu to handicap each of them and they have to work together to overcome it._ When I read that for the first time, I was like 'wow', but I already wrote mine so, just thought I'd say thanks.

Also, sorry for the delay. I haven't been writing much lately and I didn't plan for Naruto to become a jonin sensei in my outline, so I had to come up with it on the fly along with future team missions and how to get Naruto back to where I need him to be. As you might expect, next chapter will be a C-rank mission, so I came up with another original c-rank (not wave) and I'm writing that now.

Because this is my first story, some of my earlier chapters were a bit crude. When it came to Naruto's desire to help Konoha heal... some of it was true, some of it was to make the sandaime feel easier about letting him leave, and some of it was just childhood naivete. Akatsuki in later chapters searching for Naruto's location gives Naruto a reason to stay hidden for now.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"Sensei, the target should be in the next meadow." Kiba quietly alerted his teacher and teammates.

Naruto nodded as he motioned for his team to stay low. "What now?" Naruto asked them, curious about how they would proceed.

"Hinata and I should circle around while Kiba scares the target toward us. Either Hinata or I shall disable the target at that point." Shino spoke logically, while Hinata nodded along.

Naruto nodded at their basic strategy, hoping it would work better than the other attempts. As Shino and Hinata left, Naruto sat beside Kiba, thinking about the last few weeks. This was the fifth time that their team had been assigned the 'catch Tora' mission. At first he didn't understand the problem, but he quickly learned why Konoha referred to it as the 'demon cat.' Since his team was technically the tracking team, they were often assigned to return Tora to his lovable owner. Naruto on the other hand knew that the Hokage took great delight in seeing him suffer through this mission so much now, as he had unknowingly avoided it when he himself was a genin.

When Naruto felt that Shino and Hinata were in position, he nodded to Kiba letting him know that it was time. While the Tora missions were unbearable at first, they did teach his students some invaluable lessons. In Kiba's case, it was the value of silence when tracking.

As they crept toward the meadow, they spotted the target napping in a sunbeam in the middle of the meadow. Neither ninja allowed themselves to become complacent however. Both had come to learn that the damn cat would awaken before anyone got close and either run or attack.

When Naruto confirmed that Kiba knew the locations of his teammates, he motioned for Kiba to go ahead with the plan. Kiba charged into the meadow, silence abandoned in favor of alerting the cat to his presence and getting it to run straight for his teammates. As expected, as soon as Kiba made the first audible noise, the cat was immediately up and ready to bolt. When Kiba and Akamaru made their intentions clear to the cat, it turned and sped off at breakneck speed in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, his teammates had chosen a successful strategy and placement this time, because Tora headed right for where Shino was hiding. Before the cat realized what was happening, it was surrounded by a swarm of bugs eating his chakra and temporarily paralyzing him.

-13-

"Ah... successful already team 8? Iruka-san, what is their time?" The Hokage asked one of the chunin that was assisting him today.

The chunin checked his watch and double checked a paper to verify their leaving time. "It looks like... 49 minutes and 2 seconds, Hokage-sama."

"Not quite a record, but well below the average time of three hours. Good work team 8." The Hokage congratulated the team.

Team 8 muttered their courteous thanks to the Hokage's praise, but after four other captures, each of them was getting quite sick of this particular mission.

"Alright team, there's still plenty of daylight left, so return to the training ground in thirty minutes, dismissed." Naruto stated to his team, as they left to either return to the training ground to rest before he arrived or to grab something to eat before returning. Naruto however stayed in the Hokage's mission assignment room for a bit.

"Anything else Sakumo-kun?" The Hokage asked him.

"I was thinking of taking them on a low risk C-rank either tomorrow or sometime soon. Do you have any missions we would be a good match for us or should I just look on my own?"

The Hokage paused and thought over the C-ranks he had heard about for the last few hours deciding if any of them were a good match for his team.

Iruka on the other hand had something to say about the matter however. "A C-rank?! They've only been genin for a month. It's too soon for that!"

Naruto looked at the random chunin assisting the Hokage. He looked vaguely familiar, but Naruto couldn't place him. "Who are you to question my decisions regarding my team?"

The chunin, realizing he was speaking to a jonin looked a bit cowed by that fact but pressed on anyway. "I was their academy teacher!"

"Experience is one of the best teachers. Mistakes made on low rank missions are usually easily forgiven and provide a valuable learning experience. Too much training without experiencing real missions can lead to problems down the road." Naruto lectured the chunin, who he suspected hadn't been on a real mission in quite some time. "Besides, it's not like I'm going to start them with a bandit eradication or a protection mission where civilian lives would be on the line. There are plenty of mission types that would be fine for a first mission."

The chunin looked a bit uncomfortable at being lectured at, but nonetheless mumbled an apology for interfering.

Naruto looked over to the Hokage to see if he had anything, but after that little speech was more inclined to pick one out himself.

The Hokage seemed to agree as he told him that none of the missions he had would suit his request.

Naruto bid the Hokage a good day before leaving to rejoin his team.

-13-

Naruto spent the next couple days training his team while he sent a clone to look through the incoming C-rank missions to look for the perfect mission to start his team with. He needed something that would be low risk, but not a completely worthless experience. As he told that chunin earlier, bandit eradication was definitely out as well as protection missions, as he didn't want their first experience to have an extra cog in the works in the form of an unpredictable civilian.

As Naruto's clone walked into the mission office on the third day, he found it buzzing with activity in a way he had never seen it before. All the chunin and administrative genin were pouring over mission scrolls, correlating them to a map on the wall that hadn't been there before, and pulling out all the stops to locate teams to take missions.

Naruto approached one of the chunin to find out what was going on. "Hey, what happened? Why is everyone acting crazy today?"

The chunin looked at Naruto as if to yell at him, but stopped when he saw it was a jonin. "Somebody screwed up." The chunin said shortly, trying to organize the mess of paperwork in front of him. "Tax season was suppose to start two weeks from now like always, but apparently someone missed the memo that the Daimyo called it early this season, so we're rushing to provide protection missions for the tax collectors and money deliveries."

Naruto nodded at the explanation, knowing that the fire Daimyo was their biggest client, and being caught unaware like this was a serious situation. Every year, hundreds of ninja were called upon to protect both the Daimyo's people and ensure the money made it to the capitol safely. Naruto thought about the situation and will he would have preferred his team's first mission to not be a protection mission, they would be protecting a government paid tax collector and not some naive merchant. Besides, Konoha was in a bind and he had to do his part to help.

"Okay, my genin squad will take one of the lower risk C-rank collection missions." Naruto announced to the chunin.

The chunin quickly directed him to one of the others that was handing out the missions and within a few minutes, Naruto had been assigned a C-rank tax collection mission. He wasn't particularly happy with the details of the mission, but knew the chunin assigning the missions were in a bit of a bind.

-13-

The real Naruto was currently training his students in their training grounds. Hinata was practicing basic medical jutsu on a fish, Shino was practicing calligraphy, a prerequisite to fuinjutsu, and Kiba was practicing chakra control. The real Naruto was observing and splitting his time between his team members, but paused when he felt his clone approaching. When he saw the scroll in the hand of his clone, he held his hand up to catch the scroll that his clone tossed over to him. Instead of reading it however, he merely let his clone dispel to receive the memories.

The mission wasn't exactly what he had in mind, but it would work. Unfortunately, he had been handed one of the higher risked C-ranks, due to the fact that this was a jonin led team rather than a chunin led team. If there was an emergency, he could handle the situation himself. Regardless, he was confident that his team would act professionally and in an emergency, obey his commands.

"Okay guys, please stop what you're doing and come here." Naruto ordered his genin, as they dropped what they were doing and assembled in front of him.

"For the last few days, I've been looking for a good C-rank mission to get us started on." As Naruto said this, he could see Kiba's eyes light up with excitement and Hinata get a bit nervous. Shino showed no reaction, not that Naruto expected him to.

"While the mission we have been assigned isn't my first choice, there was been a situation and Konoha needs extra manpower right now." Naruto explained.

"What's going on?" Kiba asked, still excited, but a bit confused.

"Every year, the Fire Daimyo collects taxes from the various villages, towns, and cities that make up Fire Country. This is a very complicated process that takes quite some time and many people to accomplish. The capitol hires Konoha ninja to see to the safety of their tax collectors, provide the tax collectors with backup in case the smaller villages don't want to pay, and to deliver the money safely to the capitol. Needless to say, this is a very important contract to Konoha and unfortunately, this year, due to some sort of mix up, tax season started earlier than we thought."

"So, we would normally have teams all set up to do that, but we don't have that right now." Shino concluded.

"Exactly." Naruto confirmed, glad that his team were getting it. "We've been assigned to collect taxes from the villages on the southern tip of Fire Country, near the border of Tea Country. It's mostly fishing villages and rice farming villages, with a few bigger trading towns near the border. As you might expect, many of the poorer villages don't like paying taxes, so this isn't a popular job, and the tax money makes an appealing target for bandit's and thieves, so we need to make sure that we handle this professionally and swiftly. The mission will take anywhere from two and a half weeks to a month, so plan accordingly." Naruto took a look at the sun, figuring that it was about an hour until lunch, so he made a few calculations on how long it would take to pack. "I would like to leave before 3pm today, so I'd like all of you to head home, inform your families and start packing. Since this is our first mission, I will be sending a clone to each of your homes at... 1pm to help you pack." Naruto paused to think of a time for himself, hoping they could get under way before dark.

His three students looked determined at their first mission. Naruto looked to each of them for any questions before dismissing them to begin. Hopefully he could find and talk to Hana before he left.

-13-

As it turned out, Hana was also going to be sent on one of the tax collecting mission. She had been assigned to one of the B-ranked missions that would be hauling more massive amounts of money from the major cities to the Fire Capitol. These sorts of missions were quite dangerous due to the temptation of all that money and the well known traveling route. Naruto knew that it was common practice during wartime to hit these shipments and seize the money for the war effort. Even during peacetime, he was sure that many nations contemplated taking a few of these shipments for themselves, if they could get away with it.

The two only had an hour between them to enjoy each others company before Hana had to leave for her mission. Her B-rank wouldn't take nearly as long as his C-rank, but they had to leave almost immediately. Naruto and Hana spent a few minutes making out and heavily petting each other, but too soon were forced to part ways.

Annoyed with this, Naruto made his clones to send to his student's houses to help them pack appropriately while he brooded over not having more time to give his girlfriend a 'proper goodbye.'

When he had received the memories of all three students, he began making his way to the gate. As he had expected from his memories, Kiba was the first person his clone was able to get into contact with, but he was the one who need the most help with packing. It had taken only a short wait to gain access to Shino, but he had needed little help. Finally, as he expected, it had taken him quite a while to get past the guards to the Hyuuga compound in order to visit the heiresses room, but she had only needed a bit of guidance on what to pack.

By the time Naruto had reached the gate, he saw Kiba and Akamaru were already waiting for him, bursting at the seams to get started on their mission. He attempted to calm the boy down, but Shino and Hinata made their way to them before he was successful.

"Alright kids, the first thing we do when leaving the village is to check out with the chunin guards at the gate. The gate guard will ask for four things: the mission ID number, the name of the mission leader, the team member's names, and their ninja ID numbers. This is to create a secondary accounting of active ninja, independent of the mission office." Naruto explained as he got into the line of ninja either waiting to leave or enter Konoha.

After the quick checkout was done, he gathered his team and began to head south. Since he had practiced tree hopping and ninja travel with his team, he thought that they kept up rather well. Regardless, he made sure to stop regularly and make sure that his team was well hydrated.

Five hours after leaving Konoha, Naruto finally sighted a place that would be acceptable for making camp. To the relief of his team, he stopped and told them that was it for today. "Hinata, is there any wild game in the area?"

Hinata briefly activated her bloodline and scouted out the perimeter of their camp. After a few seconds, she responded to the original question. "T-There's a f-family of b-boars t-to the e-east. A m-mother and t-three piglets."

"Alright, one of those piglets will be our dinner and breakfast." Naruto stated.

Hinata looked almost stricken at the idea of killing and eating a wild animal, particularly a baby wild animal. "B-But w-we h-have food. W-Why do we need to...?"

"Never eat what you bring when you can eat what you find." Naruto said, looking at his students before proposing a question. "Why is this?"

Shino spoke up immediately. "We can only carry so much food and most of the food we carry lasts for a long time. If we eat the food we carry now, we may run out and not be able to find food later. As opposed to now, when we can eat the food we find and save our supplies for a time when we might really need them."

Naruto nodded at Shino. "Very good." He said before turning back to Hinata. "Unfortunately, the ninja lifestyle often revolves around death. As ninjas, we kill in order to survive. We kill to eat, we kill to get paid, and we kill to live. Death is unavoidable for a ninja. I hope that I can teach you to not be a victim, but you must find the conviction within yourselves to accept that truth if you wish to succeed in this profession."

As Naruto was speaking, he thought of all the times he had been forced to kill in his missions. When he had first become a ninja, he was not quite the naive child that Hinata was, but even he was a bit surprised at how much death there really was.

"Have any of you hunted before?" Naruto posed to his remaining genin.

Both Shino and Kiba nodded their heads, both having come from clans that focused on hunting and tracking.

"You two will hunt down a piglet for us to eat." Naruto directed the two, "but remember, we don't need an entire mother boar, we'll be leaving first thing tomorrow, so there's no point in wasting an entire family of boars."

Shino and Kiba understood what he meant, before silently taking off to the east to hunt down a piglet.

"Hinata, why don't you get started on a fire."

Hinata, who was still upset about the last conversation, simply nodded her head and began to gather firewood.

Naruto sighed briefly at the perils of teaching before scouting out the perimeter and deciding whether traps or sentries were necessary. They were still close enough to Konoha that they would probably be fine from enemy ninja, but bandit's could be anywhere.

Shino and Kiba returned in short order with a 30 lb piglet. It was just a baby considering an adult boar could weight upwards of 200 lbs, but it would keep the Konoha ninja fed for a few days. Naruto ordered them to drain the blood away from the camp, so as not to attract scavengers while they were sleeping.

By the time they had the pig ready for cooking, Hinata had the fire all set up and had already set up a SPIT for roasting the pig. Naruto nodded at her forethought and could see that even though she was uncomfortable with the idea of killing for her food, she wasn't impeding their efforts.

The team roasted their food while setting up their tents and sleeping areas. They gathered water from the nearby stream and set up for their dinner. By the time the pig was ready to eat, the team was tired enough from their chores and from their run earlier to scarf down their first outdoor meal as a team.

After their dinner, the team cut up the remainder of the piglet and stored it for later. Naruto then took the carcass and buried it away from the camp, again to avoid attracting scavengers.

"Okay kids, since we are technically in hostile territory, we will have a sentry posted tonight to watch out for danger. Since this is our first time, each of you will take a 90 minute shift and I will have clones do the rest." Naruto explained to his team.

As expected, Kiba had something to say when he mentioned the clone part. "Sensei, if you can use clones, why not just let us sleep? Or teach us to use a solid clone?"

"Watch duty is something everyone has to do on missions, regardless of rank. I want you to get started now, so you know what to expect, while still getting a full night's sleep. As for the clones, I want to make sure that you know how to do it first. Clones are not infallible, and unless you use jonin level clones, they can be dispelled without the user even being aware of it."

Shino and Hinata nodded, although Kiba still looked a bit suspicious.

"Well then, Kiba, you will have the first shift. After we go to sleep, wake Shino in 90 minutes. Shino will then wake me 90 minutes after that. Hinata will take the final shift and wake everyone else up when it's time for us to pack up and leave." Naruto explained how the night was going to work to his students.

-13-

The night passed fine, not that Naruto expected any real problems. Hinata had a bit of trouble waking the others up due to her own nervousness and Kiba's ability to sleep like the dead, but once breakfast was started and it was made known that anyone who didn't eat now wouldn't eat until lunch, he got up quick. The team quickly ate their breakfast and started breaking down their camp. Within a few minutes, the area was scrubbed of any presence of ninja and the team was ready to begin their journey once again.

This trend continued for the next three days as the team grew accustomed to camping with each other at night and traveling during the day. This monotonous activity was only disturbed when Naruto pointed out specific plants that could be used for medicinal ways or the different obstacles that a ninja could face when traveling. Needless to say, the team was more than ready to start the active part of the mission.

Team eight would be meeting their assigned tax collector in the city of Nagashima. It wasn't quite a major city, but it was the biggest trade city on the border of Tea country. As Nagashima had it's own garrison of samurai to protect the southern border, the Konoha ninja wouldn't have to be involved in any tax collection here, but it made for a good meeting point.

When the Konoha team finally did arrive, they immediately made their way to the government building to find their assigned charge. Naruto had prepared his team for anything, but he assumed to find a grumpy, stickler for the rules, bureaucrat. His team was more than gratified to find out that the man was quite jovial and mellow. His name was Okura and he had been in the business for many years. He knew all the local villages and had made sure that they understood what exactly their tax ryo were paying for.

Naruto felt a bit better, knowing that there would probably be less trouble from the villages that don't want to give up their money, but still remained cautious about the possibility of bandits and thieves. Naruto introduced himself and his team to the tax collector before asking if he was ready to depart. Okura and his assistant, readied their wagon and horses while speaking with the team about the schedule and route they would follow. They would be taking a counter clockwise route of the southern area of Fire country starting with the fishing villages to the east, moving north along the coast before crossing over to the western coast and criss-crossing villages and towns on their way back to Nagashima.

-13-

So far, the mission had gone more or less as scheduled. The tax collector and his assistant obviously couldn't travel as fast as ninja, but they were familiar with the area, so they did not travel unnecessarily slow either. The fishing villages they had visited thus far had mostly been poorer communities that, while not eager to give up their money, did so with little fuss.

There had been no trouble with thieves or bandits, not that Naruto expected them to be. He figured that if an attack was going to happen, it would occur at the end of their journey, when they were carrying the maximum amount of money. Regardless, Naruto kept up the sentry duty that he had started and made sure to leave an additional clone of his at night to make sure his team was extra safe.

After the first week, Naruto assigned Hinata to randomly activate her bloodline to watch out for any signs of trackers, obstacles, or anyone that was overly interested in their group. However, it wasn't until half way through the second week that they got their first customer.

It was quite obvious to Naruto when Hinata had spotted something. She had a lousy poker face, he'd have to work on that. As soon as she began scouting out the area, her eyes widened and she started fidgeting uncontrollably. She nervously and fearfully hurried up to her commanding officer and told him what she had seen.

It seems that a small group of men had been following them recently. From what Hinata had described from her observations, they were five men on horseback who would be attempting to steal through the use of speed.

Naruto silently contemplated with himself on how to handle the thieves. If he were alone, they would be almost no trouble whatsoever, but he had rookie genin with him. Rookie genin who had never taken human life. Unlike the other times he had taken genin on a mission that involved killing, these were his students, meaning he would have to deal with the fallout and any post-mission mental issues that occurred.

Eventually he sighed, dejectedly reminding himself that if he spared them the chore of killing this time, he was setting himself up to do it every other time after. 'Time to say goodbye to their innocence.' He mourned to himself.

He flagged down his other two genin and began to alert them to the impending trouble.

"Hinata has spotted a small group of horse-backed riders following us. They are likely thieves planning a snatch-and-grab." Naruto began.

As expected, his genin reacted in predicable ways. Kiba had a look of excitement on his face as he imagined beating up the bad guys and saving the day. Shino merely readjusted his sunglasses, hiding any reaction he might have had.

"The thieves will likely head straight for the wagon, hoping their speed and surprise will shock us into not acting quickly enough. They will then grab what they can and flee. When they do, each of you will use your shuriken and aim for center mass."

As Naruto said this last part, he watched as Hinata's face fell, Kiba blanched, and even Shino began to look a little green.

Hinata, who had known about the thieves longer and based on the conversation weeks earlier, feared that this would be the outcome. "S-Sensei. I-If t-the men a-are j-just t-trying to s-steal the m-money, w-why do we have t-to... I-I m-mean w-why..." Hinata mumbled out, her stutter returning in full force, erasing what little progress Naruto had made so far on fixing it.

Naruto looked at Hinata with both sadness and resolution. "Hinata, while they are most likely just going to make a run at the money, it's just that, 'Most Likely'." He said that last bit with extra emphasis. "One of them could use the surprise to kill our charge while we are distracted with the others, or they could just be an advance party, here to disable the wagon, making us more vulnerable to a bigger group."

Hinata continued to look down, not quite willing to accept that as a good enough reason to take a life.

The other two or his students on the other hand had recovered from the bombshell he had dropped and looked like they had accepted his explanation, although they were a bit intimidated with the idea of this just being the advanced party.

"Regardless of theories," Naruto started once again, this time adding firmness and a sense of finality to his voice. "The fact is that if these men make an attempt on the money, they will be attempting to steal money that is the property of the Daimyo. Stealing from the Daimyo is a capital offense and the Fire Daimyo has made it a requirement of the mission." Naruto chose not to add that it was a good way for the Daimyo to clear out Fire Country of bandits every year, an added bonus for the Daimyo, for when they tried to take the money only to fail against superior ninja.

The genin started to nod at this, only to be interrupted when Naruto jumped to the side, alerting them that the thieves were making their move.

Naruto, who had heard the thieves coming once they had started gaining speed leaped out of the way so his genin could have a clean shot at the incoming thieves. "Shuriken out." He ordered firmly.

Both Kiba and Shino drew their throwing stars and assumed a throwing position. Hinata followed more slowly and looked absolutely miserable.

A few seconds later the first of the riders became visible as he turned the corner on the road. As the others turned the corner, Naruto could see that three of them were wielding samurai swords (of dubious quality) and appeared to be aiming for them. Naruto himself fingered a few shuriken as he removed them from his pouch, knowing that had he been alone, the men would already be dead.

Naruto looked to his genin, who were torn between looking at the charging riders and looking to him for orders. Naruto nodded to them as soon as the riders were within genin throwing range. "Fire."

His genin stalled for a few seconds, but surprisingly it was Kiba who threw his shuriken first. The shuriken went wide and almost looked like it was going to miss when it curved back and struck the lead rider in the chest. While the shuriken had been in flight, Shino had apparently let one of his loose as well. Less than a second after Kiba's target had went down, Shino's target, also one holding a sword took a shuriken right to the neck.

Naruto nodded to both of them while at the same time looking to Hinata. She looked pained in a way she had never known before. "Hinata, Fire." He said again, even more firmly.

For a moment, she looked like she wasn't going to do it, but after a few more agonizing seconds she shut her eyes and threw her weapon.

-13-

Naruto contemplated silently to himself about how he was going to take things from here. The mission had officially concluded with their single interaction with the riders having been the only violence that had seen. As expected, Hinata closing her eyes at the last moment had caused her shuriken to miss the men almost completely. Despite this, she had thrown the shuriken in the end, even if it ended up missing, so it hadn't been a complete freeze.

They had returned to their original starting point of Nagashima and dropped their tax collector off. His team still had to wait in the city with the money until the second Konoha team could collect it, but since they were so far south, the chunin team arrived right on time, as it was their first collection point. That team would pick up money from various other genin teams before delivering it safely to the Fire Capitol.

Both Kiba and Shino had ended up taking lives by making their first kills. Naruto was a bit put out on how to counsel them, particularly Kiba.

When Kiba had fired his shuriken, he later expressed that he wasn't quite aware of what he was doing. He would describe seeing the thief as a random target, like back at the academy. By the time he had realized what he had done, the man was already dead on the ground. Needless to say, Kiba was quite a bit put out after that.

Shino on the other hand had known exactly what he was doing and had thrown his shuriken only after seeing Kiba get started. While he wasn't taking this as hard as Kiba seemed to, Naruto could still tell he was quite shaken.

And then there was Hinata. She had missed her target, but had thrown her weapon. Naruto would have preferred it if she had actually hit one of the men, so that she could have just dealt with it. Unfortunately, she had missed, which meant she had the psychological trauma of having tried to kill someone, combined with the continued fear of the day she would have to actually kill someone.

Regardless, Naruto had talked with his genin, both separately and together and they were now making their way back to Konoha. Naruto himself was torn between rushing to get back, so Kiba and Shino could be with their families, and taking their time, so that Hinata wouldn't have to be with hers.

-13-

Two Months Later

Naruto stood in the mission office, looking for a new C-rank mission that would hopefully give his team the closure it needed. Since the tax collecting mission, Hinata had grown both more miserable and progressively more insecure. Her stutter had returned in full force and would have annoyed him if he didn't feel so responsible. Most of all, Naruto hated her clan. He refused to call them a family, because any group who could treat a girl like this was not worthy of that name. For the first time, Naruto rejoiced in the fact that he was an orphan, rather than being born into a clan like that.

Although they had been on a few more C-rank missions, there was no more killing involved in any of them. Indeed, the missions were more like what he had in mind for their first mission. They had taken two delivery missions, one to river country and the other to Nagi Island. They had also recently returned from an escort mission that was completely uneventful.

Despite the fact that nothing violent happened on these missions, he could tell that the possibility of violence was weighing heavily on the young girl. She was constantly nervous, hands shaking, and speaking almost every word with an extremely quiet stutter.

If she were anyone else, Naruto would have strongly considered ejecting her from the ninja program or suggesting a non-violent career path. But no, the clan would not allow that. To them, having an administrative genin as a clan heiress would be an embarrassment they could not suffer. Naruto suspected that the only reason they had not disowned her from the main family was that it would be too publicly visible. Although it was no secret how the branch family members were often treated to Konoha ninjas, many of the civilians and outsiders had no idea as to the true nature of their clan dynamics. Naruto secretly thought that one of the reasons they had not done so was because they were hoping she would one day die during a mission and they could replace her as well as receive public sympathy.

Naruto knew that he had to end this behavior. Hinata had to accept the ninja lifestyle and that meant she had to kill.

With that in mind, Naruto chose a bandit eradication mission.

Pushing Hinata to kill would likely make the problem even worse, but it was one of the only steps available to eventually fix the problem. 'Sometimes thing have to get worse before they can get better.' Naruto said to himself, trying to convince himself that this was for the best.

-13- **Warning: Contains unequivocal and disturbing violence ahead.**

Naruto had spoken with his girlfriend, her mother, and even the Hokage before deciding on this course of action. All of them were familiar with the ninja lifestyle and all of them knew that despite the cruelty of it, it was the best way to move Hinata along. It would not heal her, nor would it even help her, but it would move her along to the point where she could eventually come to terms with her career.

Because that was the purpose of the mission, Naruto was able to make some adjustments that normally wouldn't happen. The first adjustment came with selecting the mission. Naruto made sure to find a bandit eradication mission for a low numbered, but well hidden group. This meant that their tracking skills would be used and the numbers would not be overwhelming. Secondly, he convinced his girlfriend to accompany them.

Although Hana did enjoy going on missions with her boyfriend, she was less than wild about going on one for the sole purpose of attending to a psychologically damaged genin.

Naruto hoped that Hinata would get to know Hana on the way there and see her as a female role model to emulate. Hana was after all an accomplished medical ninja, a strong jonin, a clan heiress, and most of all, not suffering from any confidence issues.

These particular bandits were reported to be particularly cruel to their victims. In their last five raids, they had raped every women they encountered as well as some of the men. They seemed enjoy playing games with their victims and only allowed people to go free was to make them do something utterly horrifying to themselves. In the last raid, the only survivor was freed after he willingly removed and ate one of his own eyes.

While it was still early to expose his genin to the horrors of the world, particularly these horrors, Naruto hoped that the need for these men to die would allow Hinata to feel a little better about being the one to end their lives.

Before they had left, Naruto had spoken with both Shino and Kiba about this mission. Both of them had observed that Hinata was going downhill and agreed to help her accomplish the mission, but not do the mission for her, as that wouldn't help matters in the long term. Both of them were also prepared to give Hinata the support she was missing in her home-life.

-13-

When the had arrived in the area known for the bandits, they did not have to look very far. Unfortunately, the bandits had already found another group of travelers to prey upon. This time, there were no survivors. All three of the genin were sickened by the level of depravity that was clearly evident in the state of the corpses. The one woman looked like she had been raped in every available hole before being cut open. One thing Naruto noticed that he did not share with the others was that there was clearly semen inside of the wound, semen that probably did not leak out of the stomach.

Naruto made clones to gather the bodies into a pile. While normally he would bury the bodies and mark the ground so that their families could find them and rebury them if they chose to, this time no one argued when he performed a fire jutsu on them.

He could see that the bandits were clever about leaving little tracks for any of the local samurai to find them, there was no hiding from a ninja team, let alone a ninja team that specialized in tracking. As expected, his team found their camp a few miles away.

After finding and scouting the camp, Naruto led his team away so they could plan and prepare without being discovered by the bandits. As expected, there were only eight bandits. Despite their skills in covering their tracks, they were completely at ease in the wilderness and were completely unprepared for an attack. There were no sentries and most of them were not carrying any weapons.

Naruto looked to Hinata. He could see that she was still nervous at the prospect of killing, but more than that, she was even more sickened by what they had seen from the bodies of their most recent victims.

"Hinata," Naruto began firmly, but kindly. "As I have told you, the ninja lifestyle often requires death. I know this is very troubling for you and it has plagued you the past few months. The men in that clearing are among the worst in the world. There is no need for the violence and depravity they have unleashed on their victims. They need to die. Do you understand that?"

Hinata listened to her sensei and looked put out that he was addressing her directly in front of her teammates. She blushed in embarrassment and sneaked a peak at their faces, almost expecting to see the same scorn and shame that her family would openly show her. To her surprise, she found none of that. Instead, she could only see kindness and support, and even more surprising, it was directed at her!

Eventually, her thoughts returned to what her sensei had told her. She remembered the state of the bodies and despite the fact that she had already vomited when she had first seen them (not that she was the only one, even Shino had vomited), she felt if her stomach was not completely empty now, she would be throwing up again just from memory of the smell.

She mentally knew that her sensei was correct. Violence was a very real part of their world, but that sort of violence was just... she could not even find the adjective to describe it. Honestly, Hinata admitted to herself that the people that did this deserved to die, she just wished she didn't have to be the one to do it.

Although her sensei was waiting for her reply, his expression let her know that he was giving her time to think. Not knowing quite what to say, or even trusting herself to say anything properly, she nodded. As firmly as she could.

Naruto took this as a good sign, as that nod contained more confidence than he had ever seen her show. "You will be the first one to kill them. We will approach from the trees and wait until you are ready. You can take as much time as you need and we will finish the rest when you have."

Hinata, again put on the spot, panicked slightly at her near future but again could see that her sensei and teammates were giving her as much time as she needed. Again, not trusting her voice, she nodded.

Naruto nodded back, placing his hand on her shoulder to lead her to the trees in the direction of the bandits.

Soon they had arrived back at the bandit camp and could see that the bandits were still lazing around, many of them without their weapons. Hinata crouched on a tree branch next to her sensei as he gave her his silent support. After ten minutes, Hinata had moved her hands toward her weapons pouch, but had yet to pull out a weapon.

Naruto made no move to rush her. He had spoken with his other teammates and warned them about this. They were prepared to wait all day if that was required. Hinata needed to choose to do this, she needed to consciously do it, and most of all, she needed to successfully do it.

Hinata herself was cycling between panic, fear, embarrassment, and a variety of other emotions, all of them negative. More than once, she looked to her left to glance at her sensei, but all she saw was kindness and patience. It calmed her down for a moment, but only a moment.

As she watched the bandits, she saw two of them move a bit toward them. Briefly, she panicked, fearing they had been discovered, but they were just trying to find a more comfortable patch of grass. After the fear had died down a bit, she realized she could hear them talking. As she listened, she realized with mounting horror that they were talking about how they had enjoyed raping their latest victim and how it compared to other rapes and mutilations.

Subconsciously, she pulled two shuriken out of her pouch without truly realizing it. With every sentence happily reminisced by the bandits, she felt an anger she had never known rise up from her.

"Haaaa... that kid was one of the best, but tell you one that's even better." One of the bandit's replied to the others story.

"What's that?" The other asked.

"The next one. In fact, let's go find her right now." With that the bandit stood up and started making his way to the others.

With the declaration that they were going to do it again, Hinata threw her shuriken with all her might. Both of the shuriken in her hands aimed true as they stuck the bandits center mass.

Hinata blinked, slightly shocked at what she had just done. By the time she had regained her senses, her teammates and sensei were finishing off the remaining six.

Hinata looked at the bandits she had killed before turning her eyes to her hands. She had just taken not just one life, but two.

-13-

Naruto stood in the Hokage's office, contemplating the last week. The trip back was uneventful, although they did take their time getting back. Hana had spoken with Hinata and had been a comforting presence to Hinata when she had nightmares the first night. Both Kiba and Shino had stuck close to their teammate while traveling, not allowing her to feel like she was alone. Naruto allowed himself to feel pride at the unity his team was beginning to show.

When they had returned to Konoha, Hinata did show some improvement in the areas she was struggling with in previous months. Although her clan still didn't do her any good, upon finding out that she had successfully killed did make them a bit less loathsome of her.

Of course, Hinata was not completely fine. Naruto could tell that she still had a number of issues to deal with, not just with killing. But he knew that this was a sign of her having successfully faced a tough hurdle. He hoped that her success in dealing with this issue would give her some confidence in dealing with others.

As the Hokage walked into the room as the last of the jonin were arriving, Naruto contemplated what he should do. He knew exactly what this meeting was for and was unsure of what to say.

"The chunin exam preparations are nearly completed. It's time to decide who will be competing. As I'm sure most of you know, Konoha requires that all genin applicants enter with a complete team of three. I will now hear nominations." The Hokage announced, his eyes moving to meet the various jonin in the room.

At once, Kakashi announced that his team would be entering, much to the shock of the room. Asuma immediately followed him in mirroring his action. The room grumbled at the idea of rookie genin competing in the exams. One by one, the jonin turned theirs eyes on him.

Naruto considered the pros and cons once more in his head. He immediately thought it was way too soon to contemplate promotion. There were still many mission types that his team had not done and much for them to learn. On the other hand the fact that the exams were in Konoha allowed for a valuable learning experience for them. If the exams were outside of Konoha, he would have not even considered entering them.

"Well Sakumo-kun?" The Hokage asked him.

Naruto looked him in the eye before making his decision.

-13-

AN: I'm back, been going through some things recently and haven't felt the urge to write. This being a bit of a boring chapter didn't help matters much either. I'm hoping I'll feel like writing more as I get to some of the more exciting things I have planned. I'm also finding it a bit of a challenge to write about the romance between Naruto and Hana, so if it's not that great in the future, go easy on me please.

A question I get asked a lot is how powerful Naruto is compared to the other jonin of Konoha. I will say he is definitely among the strongest, especially post training trip and that in a couple chapters you will see his full power.

I was tempted to make Hinata's shuriken hit and kill one of the horses instead of missing, but that would have probably screwed her up way to much... and been really cruel over all. Hopefully this will cover most of the mental issues that Hinata will face for a while and get back to more action in future chapters.

Upon final revision, I was a little shocked at what I wrote for some of the bandits scenes. I can only say that at the time I was drinking some kratom tea, so my mood was elevated enough to come up with that stuff without immediately discarding it. Although I do think that a real-life ninja lifestyle would include things like this from time to time, this is about the most graphic I'm going to get.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Naruto gazed at his genin as they were standing in front of him, waiting for him to say something. When he had on the spot decided to nominate his team, he had thought that he would leave the decision on whether or not to enter to them. To his surprise, all three of his genin had decided to enter independently of each others decision. He knew that Kiba was likely to enter, for the adventure and prestige it promised, but he thought that Hinata would definitely choose not to compete. To his surprise, Hinata not only showed up on the day of the exams, but looked more determined than he had ever seen her. About the only one he couldn't get a read was Shino, because while he was likely the most skilled of his genin, he was also logical enough to know that it was a bit soon for a promotion.

Returning his attention to the moment, he saw that they were a bit exhausted from the forest challenge, but other than that, in relatively good condition. It would seem that the forest of death was little challenge for his tracking squad.

"Well done." He finally stated, proudly. "You've passed the second exam of the chunin exams. Even more impressive, you were the second team to arrive at the tower."

His team sagged in relief, glad that it was over. Although they had not even spent a full day in the forest, this particular training ground was no joke.

"Why don't I escort you to one of the rooms for you to get some rest and in the morning you can tell me all about the first and second exams." Naruto said, while eager to hear their stories, was willing to wait until his team was better rested.

After he had shown his team to their room, he made for his own room for some sleep. As he walked by the other jonin, he could feel pride at being one of the two of them whose team had finished the exams. And while he was proud of them, he was also a bit at a loss. He had meant for this to be a good learning opportunity for his genin, to discover what areas of training they need to get better at and how they stacked up against their more experienced brethren. But he hadn't foreseen them truly getting this far while being in such good condition.

These thoughts made him a bit sick, as it felt as if he was wishing ill will upon his team, but he knew that as good as they were, it was too early for them to leave his care.

-14-

"Well, now that you've all rested and eaten, tell me how the first exam went." Naruto started off, as soon as his team had finished eating a late breakfast in the cafeteria.

"It was just a waste of time!" Kiba said brashly, thinking back to his experiences yesterday morning and saying the first thing that popped into his head.

"Waste of time?" Naruto repeated quizzically.

"Yeah!" Kiba continued. "We took a written test where we had to cheat off of other people, but at the end they didn't even grade it, they just passed everyone that didn't get caught."

Naruto turned to his other genin for a better answer, knowing personally that it wasn't that simple.

Thankfully Shino was able to speak up and concisely sum up both the purpose and eccentricities of the exam. "While Kiba is correct that the purpose was information gathering, he is understating the significance of the final question of the exam. The final question was a decision on whether or not to face an unknown situation in spite of the dangers involved. Many of the teams that failed that exam were unwilling to face the consequences of failing."

Naruto nodded, already somewhat familiar with the situation, but wanting to know more about their experience, let them continue. "And how did you know to correctly take the final question?"

This time it was Hinata that spoke up. "S-Sometimes, you have to d-do th-things you don't want in order to succeed."

Naruto nodded at her admittance, but was internally a bit suspicious. When he had heard about the first exam from the other jonin, he thought that at least one of his genin would have chosen not to take the last question, thus being a good learning experience for him to build on.

"Very good." He eventually said. "What about the second exam?"

"Hah, that was even easier!" Kiba said, more loudly than necessary.

"How were you able to get your opposite scroll?" Naruto asked.

Shino replied again with his cold logical explanation. "I placed some of my bugs on the teams with less chakra and Hinata was able to spot one of them as being placed in a gate close to ours. We followed them until they stopped to set up their camp and took them down one by one as they split up to gather firewood, collect water, and set up their tent. From there we decided to go straight to the tower before any teams had the opportunity to set up traps around it."

Hinata and Kiba both nodded at his explanation.

"Well, I've said so before and I'll say so again, very good job. Both of these exams depend heavily on teamwork, and the fact that you've completed it so early says a lot about you guys!" Naruto exclaimed proudly to them.

"S-Sensei?" Hinata spoke up quietly.

"Yes?"

"W-What h-happens next?"

"Traditionally, the third exam is a tournament held in front of a large audience, however, depending on how many people pass the second exams, there may need to be preliminaries.

-14-

Naruto stood on the sidelines with the other Konoha jonin watching the successful teams stand at attention in front of the Hokage. 'Seven teams! There will definitely be preliminaries.' He thought to himself.

As the Hokage and Hayate were explaining the next steps to the genin, Naruto's thoughts and eyes wandered among the various people in the room. He saw the Hokage trying to appear stern, but Naruto knew he took great pride at having five of the teams remaining being Konoha teams. Most of the Jonin instructors were looking bored with the obvious exception of Gai. For the first time in a long while, Naruto felt the embarrassment of being associated with the eccentric jonin.

Naruto was knocked out of his thought when one of the genin announced that he would be forfeiting before the match-ups could be decided. Naruto inspected the extremely pale skinned genin for any obvious injuries, but couldn't see anything wrong with him. Naruto narrowed his eyes as his suspicion rose, but was interrupted by the board showing the first match of Sasuke Uchiha vs. Yoroi Akado.

As his own genin and himself made their way to the observation areas on the side with the other Konoha shinobi, Sasuke and his opponent had already started fighting.

[same as cannon]

During the match, Naruto observed Sasuke had been infected with some sort of Cursed Seal, that he had heard rumors about earlier. Sasuke managed to fight it down without taking too much damage as he pulled out a win against the one trick genin.

As Kakashi took his student away for an emergency sealing, everyone turned their attention to the board for the next round. The result: Zaku Abumi vs Rock Lee.

Naruto turned his attention to the two genin as he internally grimaced again at the mini-Gai. He had heard rumors that Gai had finally infected someone with his 'youth', but hadn't wanted to see it come true. After Naruto had laid eyes on young Lee, his worst fears were confirmed.

Indeed, as soon as Hayate began the match, Lee let out a shout of "YOUTH" as he charged the other genin.

Zaku was able to lift one of his hands and partially aim a wind blast from his palm, but Lee was merely blown back temporarily. In the next second, Lee was once again within arms length of the Oto genin and launched a powerful kick at his back. Zaku was sent sailing five feet as he struggled to get back up.

Lee capitalized immediately and knocked the other genin out. As Hayate declared Lee the winner, everyone was forced to watch the celebration between Gai and his student as they celebrated by shouting of the love of youth and with a horrifying hug.

Much too late, Hayate escorted them off the floor as he called for the next match to be decided. Ino Yamanaka vs. Sakura Haruno.

[same as cannon]

Naruto watched in distaste as they hauled away the two Konoha genin. The fight they showed was more academy level than genin level. He let himself be torn away from watching them to see who was going to fight next. Neji Hyuuga vs. Subaku no Kankuro

The two fighters made their way down from opposite sides of the arena. Each displayed a confidence that was missing from the previous fight. As soon as they both arrived, the proctor started the match.

"Begin!"

Both opponents took a step back from the other and fell into fighting stances. Kankuro dropped the large bundle on his back and began to slowly approach his opponent. Neji on the other hand seallessly activated his bloodline before smirking in a smug fashion.

Kankuro charged at his opponent, ready to throw a punch at the Hyuuga. Neji on the other hand, merely deflected it to the side before turning and charging straight for the bundle Kankuro had dropped at the start of the match. Within a second, Neji was on top of the bundle, striking key spots with his Jyuken.

Within seconds of the onslaught, another Kankuro fell out of the bundle and tried to get away, only for Neji to redouble his efforts into his attack.

"Pathetic. To think you could fool my eyes with such a basic tactic. You should have known that to fight a Hyuuga was a pointless gesture." Neji said as finished his attack.

Kankuro tried one last time to move, but Neji took that as an opportunity to strike him in the head, knocking him out.

Dramatically, Neji turned and walked back toward his side of the arena. "Proctor, he won't be getting back up."

Hayate confirmed the knockout while summoning the medics. "Winner, Neji Hyuuga of Konoha."

The genin in the arena mumbled between themselves. So far, Gai's team had won two of the places in the finals and had won their matches in the shortest times.

Subaka no Temari vs. Hinata Hyuuga

Naruto looked down at his first student to be called down. As expected, Hinata looked nervous at the prospect of fighting someone, especially in a public area.

Naruto turned his gaze over to his student's opponent. The girl from Suna had a large fan on her back, indicating she was a wind user.

"Hinata..." Naruto whispered to her. "The fan indicates a wind user. If you allow her to get distance from you, this fight will end badly. You must stay close and attack first."

Knowing his student as he did, he knew that his advice was contrary to her normal demeanor. Despite the fact that she was a close ranger fighter and had little in terms of long range jutsu, her shyness and dislike of violence usually kept her far from the action. If however, she tried to do that here, she would be pummeled with wind jutsus.

Hinata eventually nodded and made her way down the stairs to her fight. Naruto did observe that she tried to start as close to Temari as possible before the proctor started the match.

As the proctor dropped his hand to start the match, Hinata burst forward in a speed that surprised everyone that knew her. No one had ever seen her be this assertive for a fight.

Even Temari, her opponent, seemed briefly surprised. However, Temari, being a long range fighter, was used to the strategy of her opponents trying to get as close as possible before she could ready her fan. Unfortunately for Temari, in real life situations, her opponents would normally not be starting as close as the proctored fight had let her be. Before Temari could get any momentum to charge her fan for a wind jutsu, Hinata was already upon her.

As soon as Hinata was within range, began to strike at points that would disable her opponent. She had already activated her byakugan on the way over and was ready to take her out. Hinata struck at the center mass of her opponents body, only to find her strikes blocked with the massive fan. It seemed that her opponent could use the fan for both offense and defense. But Hinata knew that she couldn't use the fan for both at the same time, so as long as she kept attacking, her opponent wouldn't be able to attack her.

Temari herself was growing quite a bit frustrated by Hinata's strategy herself. While she had engaged in taijutsu against her sensei and others in the academy, this was the first time she had been in a taijutsu fight against a real opponent. Normally, she blew her opponents away well before they got close.

Temari continued to mourn this fact while trying to both back away from the continuously attacking girl and block with her fan. After a minute, she began to notice a pattern in the attacks. If she was correct, then in a minute, an opening would present itself to attack her opponent.

Within seconds, Hinata began the attack pattern Temari had predicted. With a strike intended to strike at her shoulder, Temari side-stepped while using the fan to shield against both of Hinata's dangerous arms. She then gathered as much momentum as she could and launched a kick straight at Hinata's stomach.

Although her byakugan could see the kick coming. Hinata saw an opportunity that she knew she couldn't afford to miss. As the kick hit her stomach, Hinata tried to brace herself, but could still feel quite a bit of pain as it impacted. Trying to suck up the pain as much as possible, she used her right hand to keep the fan at bay, while using her left hand to strike at an unprotected tenkutsu on the attacking leg.

Temari felt the enhanced bee-sting-like attack and withdrew her leg before another one could hit. As she was withdrawing it, she smirked, knowing that while her leg did take a little hit, her attack did much more damage. After withdrawing the kick back to herself and placing it back on the ground, she was absolutely shocked to discover that once she put weight on the leg, she could feel it collapsing in on itself.

As she was distracted by what was happening to her leg, Hinata took this as her chance to spring forward and try to land as many hits as possible. While the first attack was blocked by her opponents free hand, her second attack successfully landed on her opponents center mass, closing another tenkutsu.

Her opponent, sensing the danger of an onslaught of attacks, dropped her heavy and cumbersome fan to better protect herself.

As Hinata continued to pummel away at her opponent, she was discouraged to find that her opponent was still able to block her strikes, despite having two of her tenkutsu closed. She was completely surprised when her opponent was able to find the time to pull a tanto out of her dress. Although it was possible for the Hyuuga clan to reinforce their hands to deal with a majority of ninja tools, Hinata was not that advanced. She had no choice but to get some distance from her opponent.

While backed away from her opponent a short distance, Hinata knew that she couldn't back away too far, or else her opponent could just pick up her fan and blast her away. On the other hand, she couldn't get to close or she would be cut with the knife. Reluctantly, she pulled out her own kunai and caught her breath in the stalemate.

Temari, meanwhile, was in quite a bit of pain. She had learned the hard way that Hyuuga strikes were not just bee-stings and did considerable damage. She could feel her leg aching and knew that she would not be able to run for a while. The other hit seemed to have missed a little, but still ached horribly. She knew that the longer this fight went on, the more likely it was that she was going to lose. She needed to take a risk and get the distance she needed to finish this with a strike from her fan.

Reluctantly, she began to move with her aching leg and began to attack the white-eyed girl with her tanto. She wasn't skilled enough to catch her, but her opponent wasn't brave enough to try and mount a counter attack. With great reluctance, she sighed and prayed that this would work. With a great strike, she swung her tanto at the girl as her opponent backed away to avoid the strike. With just the twitch of her hand, she then threw the knife directly at her opponent.

As Hinata backed away from the more wild strike, she was completely surprised when instead of remaining with her opponent, the tanto headed directly for her. Hinata panicked for just a moment before wildly dodging to avoid the weapon. As she looked at the Suna girl, she watched in horror as she was flying through a series of hand-seals. Hinata wasted little time in trying to rush her opponent.

Unfortunately, she was half a second too late.

As soon as Temari had thrown the knife, she began flying her hands through a series of seals. While she was much more comfortable using her fan as a conduit for wind jutsus, she was not inexperienced at using hand-seals. She tried to rush through them as fast as possible while gathering as much chakra as she could, knowing that any delay or mistake would lead her her being attacked before she could complete the jutsu. Just as her opponent was within striking distance, she completed the last seal while taking a deep breath.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough."

Because Hinata was in such a rush to get to her opponent, she had no time to channel chakra into her feet to stick to the ground. As such, when the gust of wind hit her, she went flying to the opposite side of the arena.

Due to the small nature of the arena, Hinata was barely able to land in a position that wasn't entirely awkward. By the time she made it to her feet and looking to her opponent, she already had her fan in her hand and was preparing to send an even bigger gust of wind her way. Hinata tried to think of something she could do, but Temari left no time for her to think as she put as much of her strength behind her next attack as possible.

The blast of wind that escaped from her fan was focused and came right for Hinata with full force.

Hinata, who was still trying to recover from her awkward landing previously, only had enough time to send enough chakra to her feet to stick to the floor and cover her head and neck by crossing her arms. Unfortunately, this was no where near enough as the wind hit her full force and once again slammed her into the wall.

Temari, who was panting heavily due to the last few minutes, paused before launching a second strike with her fan. The hit she had taken to her chest previously was now aching almost unbearably. She knew that she should be attacking again to make sure her opponent wouldn't be getting up, but she wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest. Instead, she merely stood her ground and prayed that her last hit would be enough.

As Hinata struggled to get to her feet after the last attack, she felt more pain than she could ever remember. She could feel at least a couple of her bones where broken and her own consciousness was fading with such strength that is was all she could do to hang on. As she was able to get on one of her feet, she started working on getting the second foot on the ground. While she was able to pull it up a bit, the second that she put pressure on her other foot, she felt an enormous amount of pain that told her that there were more broken bones in that foot.

As she collapsed on the floor after trying to get up, she could no longer stop the blackness from taking over her vision.

-14-

Naruto starred at his student lying in the hospital section of the tower. The final portion of the last match had been positively brutal on her. She had five broken bones, three of which were in her left leg, and a severe concussion.

When he had considered the dangers of entering his students in this competition, he knew that this was a very real possibility. He supposed that he should be grateful that it happened here instead of the forest so that she could get immediate medical attention, but that didn't seem to matter to him at the moment.

In the distance, he heard the sounds of the current match being fought, a Nara versus the girl from the Sound village, but his attention was dominated by the view in front of him.

As the medical-nin attending her finished up what he was doing, the man turned to him and began to speak. "I've mended the bones, but she will need a couple weeks before they fully return to normal. The concussion was serious, but she is out of the danger zone and only needs rest."

Naruto nodded to the man, not trusting himself to speak rationally.

-14-

Kiba watched as his former academy classmate and fellow troublemaker fight against the Sound girl. Although fight was probably the wrong word to describe what Shikamaru was doing. He seemed to mostly just take punishment and dodge attacks while trying to do as little as possible.

While he eventually did reverse the situation and manage to get a win through trickery and cunning, Kiba was disappointed that it wasn't a better fight. As the girl was carried out of the ring toward medical wing, he could feel his own concern grow for his own teammate there.

"Inuzuka Kiba versus Yakushi Kabuto." The proctor shouted.

Kiba suddenly turned his attention back to the ring where he could see that his name was indeed on the monitor. With increasing excitement he collected his companion and made his way down the stairs to begin his own match. As he was passing the door, he saw his sensei returning from the medical wing. As they passed one another, Kiba saw his sensei give him an encouraging nod.

With a large grin, Kiba sent him a thumbs up that promised a quick victory, before going over to face his opponent.

Kiba recognized the plain looking, glasses wearing boy as being the older genin who had introduced himself to the rookies right before the first exam. As he recalled, the other genin had been in six other exams and had failed every one of them. 'Hehe, this is going to be easy!' Kiba thought triumphantly.

His thoughts were interrupted by the proctor's voice. "Are both of you ready...? Begin!"

Kiba looked down at his loyal puppy, who had followed him down to the arena. As Akamaru was preparing for battle, Kiba waved his hand in front of him before declaring loudly, "Don't bother boy... this will be easy. I'll finish this match quicker than anyone else!"

As Kiba said all this, he made shifted himself into a more dramatic position and peaked at the girls in the arena, to make sure they were watching him.

He was interrupted from his delusions by Akamaru, who started barking loudly.

Kiba turned his attention to his dog, who seemed to be directing his attention to his opponent, who Kiba had been ignoring as unimportant. When Kiba finally allowed his attention to shift, all he saw was a blur.

His opponent hadn't been idle during the time that Kiba had been bragging. As soon as Kiba's attention shifted away from him, Kabuto pulled a kunai out of his bag, sprinted silently to his opponent, and knocked the ring end of the kunai into his opponents head.

When Kiba had fallen to the ground, Akamaru tried to attack Kabuto, but without the Inuzuka clan jutsus, he was just a small puppy. Kabuto ignored the dog as he immediately place the sharper end of the kunai to Kiba's neck and looked to the proctor.

With little doubt, the proctor called the match for him and dismissed the two genin.

"Tenten versus Misumi Tsurugi!"

Both competitors made their way down to the arena to engage in their battle for a spot on the big stage. The two genin each looked serious and didn't seem to want to engage in any pre-battle banter.

Seeing this, Hayate wasted no time in beginning the match.

As soon as the match started, Tenten pulled out a couple of kunai from her pouch and threw them at her opponent with pinpoint accuracy.

Her opponent quickly dodged and began to make his way over to her, trying to close the distance on what he believed was a long range fighter.

-14-

Naruto wasn't paying much attention to the match as he was currently berating and comforting Kiba for the last match. The medics had only needed a minute to apply healing chakra to Kiba's head to fix the light concussion Kabuto had given him.

"But he can't do that... it was cheap!" Kiba bemoaned, trying to change the fact that he had lost so quickly and easily.

"You're lucky he didn't decide to kill you instead. What did you think would happen if you turned your back on your opponent during a live match."

"But, but, we weren't fighting yet. I was..." Kiba explained, trying explain that his opponent had interrupted their pre-match banter.

"Did you hear the proctor begin the fight?" Naruto asked him.

"Well..."

"Then the match was started. Let me guess, you thought that you could demoralize him by acting overconfident." Naruto said.

"But that's what Sasuke and Neji did!" Kiba declared.

"That may be, but they didn't lose sight of their opponents. You blatantly ignored him because you thought he was too weak to fight. Well, he wasn't."

"But that's not fair!" Kiba cried.

"Ninja's don't play fair. They take advantage of every benefit they can get their hands on. Your opponent showed a lot of chunin qualities during that match: intelligence, mercy to comrades, quick-thinking, and silence."

"But... … I screwed up big time, didn't I." Kiba finally said.

"Kiba, if you learned a lesson about taking ninja life seriously and not treating this lifestyle as a game, I would consider this day a success."

Kiba frowned at that, but did not argue.

-14-

Eventually, the match came to a close with Misumi revealing his stretching / extreme flexibility abilities, quickly maneuvering himself to be in a position of being able to snap the neck of his opponent.

A great many people were surprised to discover that Hayate did not call the match then and there. Upon taking a closer look at the scene before them, it was revealed that Tenten had managed to not only produce a kunai in each hand, but to have them against two separate vital places.

Indeed, it seemed that while Misumi had been busy wrapping himself around her neck, she had managed to extract yet even more weapons from her seemingly inexhaustible supply and point them directly above his liver and femoral artery.

With neither opponent willing to act, Hayate ended the match in a draw.

-14-

Naruto tried to refocus his attention to the present. As he had been comforting Kiba, he tried to impart a bit of wisdom on how to better himself in the future, most particularly... not underestimating your opponent.

"Shino Aburame versus Subaku no Gaara."

Naruto quickly refocused his attention both on his last student and on the opponent he would be facing. This would be the second time one of his students would be facing a Suna ninja and he hoped it would be a more pleasant outcome this time.

This particular Suna genin looked to be an interestingly intimidating young boy with a strangely large gourd on his back. The boy was already on his way down to face his challenge with an expression on his face that Naruto could only describe as murderous.

As Naruto turned his attention on his remaining subordinate, he saw something in him that he had never seen in his quiet student before... fear.

"I-I forfeit."

Naruto could only blink as he heard what surprised him more than anything else this day. To his knowledge, Shino had never displayed anything resembling fear and had certainly never stuttered either.

As the proctor confirmed his forfeit and called the last two genin to the stage (Dosu and Choji), Naruto felt a sudden burst of killing intent focused near him. He quickly isolated the source as the Suna ninja that was frozen halfway down the stairs to the arena. In that moment, Naruto went from wanting to question his genin about his supposed cowardice to wondering what his student knew that he should as well.

Naruto shifted himself to stand between his students and the genin that was still blasting killing intent. "Why?" Naruto queried simply but firmly, breaking his students out of the state the killing intent had put them in.

Shino, Naruto could tell, was trying to pull himself together in order to answer. "We... We saw his team in the forest. His team encountered a group from Ame. That boy... he could wield sand almost like I wield insects. He was able to use his sand both defensively and offensively to massacre the other team. But it was more than just power... he seemed to take pleasure in seeing the faces of his victims as they realized they were going to die."

Naruto patiently heard all of this while keeping an eye on the Suna genin who had finally decided to return to his own team. He knew that Shino was highly logical and trusted that if his analysis revealed that his opponent was not only too powerful, but also completely devoid of mercy, then is was good enough for him. At least until he saw this genin in action himself.

Meanwhile, the boy from the new Sound village had used the vibrations of his glove to finish off his opponent had was declared the winner.

As the proctor and Hokage were congratulating the winners, Naruto took this as an opportunity to lead his male students down to the medical center to check on their teammate together.

-14-

AN: This chapter was one of the toughest chapters to write. I wasn't completely sure I wanted to enter them in to the chunin exams, but wasn't sure how to write around it either. Hopefully, this will give Hinata a bit more confidence, teach Kiba a bit of humility, and make Shino seem a bit more human.

Kiba's fight was the toughest to write and I kept going back and forward on who his opponent should be. Should it have been Sai or Kabuto? Both of which have every reason to forfeit and hardly any reason to continue.

Either way, it is what it is. Please don't judge me too harshly for this chapter, I've been debating whether to cut it from the story or not, but decided to keep it.

I hope that with this chapter done, I can pick up the writing a bit more now that I'm returning to more of a Naruto intensive story-line than a Team Naruto story-line. I already have over half of chapter 15 done and I'm loving writing it.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

It had been a month since the preliminary stage of the chunin exams had ended and the finals were about to begin. In the distance, Naruto could hear the excitement and cheers emanating from the stadium as the exams were already underway.

Naruto's mind went back to both the day of the preliminaries, as well as the day where he had faced the dilemma of whether or not to enter his kids in the exam. To be quite honest, he was glad that none of his students actually made it to the finals, however guilty those thoughts made him feel. Each of his students were able to get invaluable experience and learn lessons that would aid them in the future.

Kiba had learned not to underestimate opponents as well as the dangers of overestimating himself. Hinata had learned that sometimes she had to be proactive in order to succeed. And Shino had learned that when faced with two bad choices, you had to compare the gains with the losses and pick the choice best for yourself and the village.

He knew that Shino would take that lesson to heart and learn from it, and he hoped that Hinata's performance was enough to give her a confidence boost to last through her next fight. He just had to make sure Kiba wouldn't revert back to the same behavior over time.

Another loud cheer interrupted this thoughts and brought him back to the present. Naruto resumed his walk to the next stop within his current posting.

"All clear, Sir!" An older chunin announced as Naruto entered the small room.

Naruto nodded at the older man, taking a brief look around before resuming his walk.

Internally, he couldn't believe there were people who actually wanted to do this kind of thing every day. He resolved himself to make sure he got out of this posting as soon as the chunin exams were over.

Flashback – 1 month ago

"Sakumo, come in."

"Hokage-sama." Naruto greeted the elderly man as he once again walked into the large office.

"I'm sorry that your students didn't make it to the finals."

"They did well. Truthfully, I wasn't sure if any of them were really ready, but didn't want to deny them the chance to take them when they had home field advantage." Naruto tried to explain.

The Hokage nodded, remembering his own troubled team and what they were like when they were mere genin.

"Well, as you know, village security has been heightened due to the number of foreign visitors we have both in the village and the number of high ranking visitors that will be coming for the exam finals."

Naruto nodded, knowing all of what the Hokage was saying.

"Because your students did not make it to the finals, I'd like to transfer you to village security for the duration of the chunin exams."

Naruto briefly stilled at this news. It wasn't uncommon for ninja to be asked to serve in village security. In fact, during emergency situations, it was expected that all Konoha ninja work with village security to resolve the problem.

"Where would you like me to be?" Naruto asked.

"I'd like to station you as the jonin in charge of the eastern wall. Normally two tokubetsu jonin are stationed there with a few handfuls of chunin, but..." The Hokage trailed off, looking distinctly uncomfortable for a moment.

"Is something wrong?" Naruto asked, having almost never seen the Hokage with this look on his face.

The Hokage looked at Naruto with eyes full of indecision and hesitation. He continued this look, pondering the last few days.

"Something happened during the second phase of the exams." The Hokage began cryptically.

Naruto focused his eyes on the Hokage, waiting patiently, but alertly, for the Hokage to continue.

The Hokage kept his silence for a few more moments before reaching a decision. "Orochimaru made an appearance in the forest of death."

"Is Akatsuki here?" Naruto asked, suddenly on alert. Internally, Naruto was pondering how he would fair against one of the sannin.

The Hokage immediately shook his head. "No, in fact my informant believes that Orochimaru has left the Akatsuki permanently. No, Orochimaru was interested in Sasuke Uchiha. He marked the boy with a cursed seal and tried to recruit him with promises of power for defeating his brother. When the examiner of the second exam caught up with him, he told her that if we stopped the exams, he would destroy Konoha."

Naruto pondered the reasons of that last statement. Orochimaru was interested in the chunin exams and wanted them to continue. Like all jonin, he was well familiar with the most dangerous criminals of Konoha and knew that nothing good could come of this.

"So you're assigning all available personnel to village security?"

The Hokage nodded his head. "Anbu will handle the internal village security. Keep your focus on external threats."

Naruto thought about what the Hokage was telling him before eventually nodding in acceptance.

End Flashback

Naruto made his way to the last turret of his section of the village wall, checking to make sure there were no problems before making his way back to the central node of his section. Despite what the Hokage had told him, he was experienced enough not to panic or freak out at the possibilities of something unexpected happening. Indeed, the only thing that caused him any distress at all was what to do with his students.

Obviously, the wall was no place for them, especially if something went wrong. So he needed to find something for his students to do, to keep them out of... and away from trouble.

In the end, he searched through the long term D-rank missions before finding one that was right for his students. He found one that he thought would both keep them away from trouble, but also provide them with an important task in case of emergency.

Flashback – Yesterday

"How is the academy going?" Naruto asked to students, each of them displaying different emotional states.

"Pftt... It's going stupid. I thought I would never come back here." Kiba declared loudly.

The other two students responded with more positive feedback, but still looked less than thrilled at their current assignment.

Due to needing extra manpower for village security, the Hokage had pulled about a third of the chunin currently serving in the academy. Most of the chunin that were temporarily reassigned were the assistant instructors or substitute teachers, so genin could be used as replacements, for a while anyway.

Kiba had been assigned to his old teacher Iruka, who had been given a new class of first years. This was done so that Kiba could have the easiest students to deal with and so that their old instructor could keep an eye on his most rambunctious student. Shino had been assigned to the second years and Hinata had been assigned to the third years.

"Well, it's only a few more days. After that we can go on a C-rank mission and get back to training." Naruto replied, himself eager to spend some time doing some thing constructive.

In the distance, the academy warning bell sounded, alerting students it was time to get to class.

"Time to get back to work." Naruto said in a faux cheerful manner.

His students grumbled, but made their way to put up with another day of teaching academy students.

"Shino, stay behind for a moment." Naruto called out.

All three students turned, but with an encouraging nod, two left while the third walked back.

Once the other genin were outside of hearing range, Naruto began a conversation he hoped that Shino was mature enough to hear.

"Shino, if anything happens in the next few days I want you to watch over the team and stay with the academy students."

Shino paused at what he had said and looked to be deep in thought.

"Is something expected..." Shino began to ask before he was cut off.

"Don't ask questions that I can't answer. Just know that I stationed you here for a reason. The academy is a strategic target and the students are the future ninja of Konoha. If something happens, their safety is a top priority. Make sure your teammates are safe that they continue to look after the students. Don't let Kiba run off half cocked to look for danger. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Naruto grabbed his students shoulder as he said that last sentence and waited for an answer.

Naruto could tell that Shino was more than a little rattled by what he had just said, and the fact that he could tell that Shino was rattled said a lot.

"Yes... I... I will make sure that all of us stay together and guard the students." Shino replied eventually.

Naruto nodded before patting his student on the shoulder and pushing him to get to class.

End Flashback

Naruto forced himself once again to keep his mind focused on the present. In the distance, he could hear yet another cheer or cry from the stadium, but here it was all quiet.

"SIR! LOOK OUT!" Several voices from alongside the wall suddenly brought his attention to an area a few thousand feet away.

Out of nowhere, literally, a giant three headed snake had just appeared in a white cloud of smoke. The snake wasted no time in heading straight for a section in the wall a hundred feet away from Naruto.

For just a moment, Naruto froze, thinking that this was just his imagination running wild for a second. The shouts of his fellow Konoha ninja beginning to panic forced him back to the present. Naruto ran through a quick inventory of what he could do to stop the snake.

Naruto forced his attention away from the snake to check the surroundings and found to no surprise that dozens of men were emerging from the forest behind the snake. They were keeping their distance, most likely waiting for the giant summon to create an opening in the wall... which would happen in less than a minute.

'A full invasion. The worst case scenario it is.' Naruto allowed himself to think, despite the obviousness of that thought. 'I hoped that I would never have to do this, but I have no choice.'

With that last thought, Naruto began to channel his chakra in a very familiar way to him. He let it encompass his entire body, focusing on manipulating it to grow hotter and contain it within inches of his skin.

"Back away from me!" Naruto shouted to his subordinates, warning them off.

-15-

Sei Okada, a chunin stationed at the center node of the eastern wall, watched agape as the biggest animal he had ever seen headed straight for him. Sei had been a chunin for four years and a ninja for eight years. He had earned regular promotion for his mission record and his steady growth, but knew that he would probably never be jonin. He had settled for village security because it was less dangerous, steady work. Realistically, he knew that this was a possibility in his line of work, but never thought it would truly happen.

As the serpent drew closer and closer, he wracked his brain trying to think of something... anything he could do, but kept coming in blank. Sooner than he thought possible, the snake was almost right in front of him, leading him to turn and retreat.

As he turned, he paused when he saw a glow coming from the turret adjacent to his. The glow, which he had not noticed, due to obvious reasons, was getting brighter and brighter. When it seemed that it could not get any brighter, the light sudden moved and headed straight for the snake.

In what could only be described as a blur, the light had suddenly seemed to appear on the other side of the snake.

A moment passed, in which time, the snake still moved toward the wall, due to the sheer momentum it was traveling with. Only... when the body of the snake hit the wall, it did so without the necks and heads. At the same time, a mighty crash was heard as the heads had fallen to the ground.

Sei Okada took a second look at the light, that was now standing on the body of the snake in front of the wall. 'Wait... standing?' Sei thought as he gave shape to the light.

The light was in reality a man who seemed to be exuding light, no, wait... not light... Fire!

-15-

Naruto kept himself in a state of absolute concentration. The fire surrounding his body was strong enough to sever the snakes heads from their bodies, and strong enough to do the same to himself if he wasn't careful.

This was the advanced level of this skill he had shown the Sandaime and Hana. It had started as just being able to use one hand, but over time he was able to use his entire body. After he succeeded in that, he focused on heating the fire even more.

That was the great thing about fire, the hotter it was, the more dangerous it was. There is almost no limit to how hot fire can get. Every time he found a limit of how hot he could get his fire, it was just another obstacle to overcome and surpass. The end result, was this.

The fire had been enough to sever the snakes heads with almost no resistance and stop the snake before it could do much damage to the wall.

However now he was facing the moral dilemma he had been dreading.

The large army before him.

Naruto knew that he had no choice. There were hundreds of ninjas already in the clearing, ready to invade, pillage, and burn Konoha to the ground. A closer look at a few of them revealed most of them to be Oto ninja, with Suna ninja appearing near the back. As enemy ninja were still pouring out of the forest, Naruto knew that he would have to stop them.

Taking the few seconds he had left, he cleared his mind from all distractions, doubts, and fears. For this, he would need absolute control.

With that state of mind, he leaped into the grassy field in front of the wall, seconds before a full platoon of Oto ninja charged toward him.

Naruto merely raised his hand and focused.

-15-

Ibiki Morino, tokubetsu jonin and head of the torture and interrogation department ran with his subordinates to the eastern wall. As the torture and interrogation department would likely have little to do until after a conflict had ended, the Hokage had assigned him and his department to serve as a reserve force for whoever needed it during the exams. Word had spread very quickly about the giant 3-headed snake summon headed toward the eastern wall, so that was where he was leading his men now. What he could do to stop such a monster was another matter entirely.

Ibiki and the five squads of ninja backing him up made it to the inner side of the eastern wall and bounded up the stairs, which they were quite surprised to find intact. As they were rushing up, Ibiki wondered how they had beaten the snake summon here and whether the information they received was falsified.

When he finally emerged from the stairway, he prepared himself for the absolute worst. What he saw however, surprised the heck out of him. To his immediate right was the dead body of a snake summon. Standing alongside the wall were the chunin who were assigned to guard the perimeter. The odd thing was that each of them was in a state somewhere between shock and wonder.

Ibiki turned his head to assess the battleground when he saw the hundreds of foreign ninja on the outside. Ibiki quickly ducked down to make sure his body was covered by the protections of the wall, but immediately poked his head back out to the battlefield.

That is were he saw it. What every one of his colleagues were staring at. A single ninja was fighting the Oto and Suna ninja.

Ibiki had never seen anything like it in his entire life. One man was fighting an entire army of ninja alone. As he watched, a pair of Oto ninja both fired off a pair of water jutsus at the single ninja. The ninja seemed to dance around the water attacks and merely raised his hand against the two ninja. In his hand, a light started to appear before seemingly shooting out in a burst of intense flames. The two Oto ninja were completely incinerated, along with a handful of others behind them being horribly burned.

The cries of the horribly burned but still alive men behind them demoralized the attackers, but each of the Oto ninja knew what would happen to them if they retreated. Orochimaru controlled his men with fear and promises of power. Those who disobeyed or failed him would often end up on an operating table being experimented on, without an anesthetic.

The Oto ninja tried to rally and use their superior numbers to overwhelm the single man, but with the ability to send horribly destructive blasts of fire from his hands without the need for seals, he seemed to be unstoppable.

When a ninja from his squad bumped against him, Ibiki was jolted out of his current thinking. As he looked around, he could see that he had fallen into the same state as those around him. Summoning his courage and authority, he moved to try and snap his allies out of their state.

"Snap out of it! Don't get complacent just because their busy with him right now! Use throwing weapons and long range ninjutsu to keep them away from the wall."

The men and women who both accompanied him and were already stationed here blinked and flinched at the sudden distraction from their trances. Each of them were a bit slow to process what he had said, but remembered they were ninja on the front line of a war.

Slowly but surely, the chunin along the wall began to use either ninjutsu or throwing weapons at the ninja who were too close to the wall. The Konoha ninja were cautious not to throw any near their single ally, but with the hundreds of ninja still out there, there was no shortage of opportune targets.

As the men and women had resumed their jobs, Ibiki moved over to the closest tokubetsu jonin to find out who that man fighting was. "Report." He asked brusquely.

"I..." The tokubetsu jonin started before shaking his head and starting over. "The 3-headed snake summon appeared just a few minutes ago and started charging at the wall. Right as it was about to crash through, our commander charged at it and beheaded it with a sort of intense fire jutsu that seemed to surround his entire body!"

"Where is he now?" Ibiki asked, but suspecting he knew the answer based on the 'intense fire jutsu' explanation.

"That's him." The tokubetsu jonin pointed at the single ninja who was currently still battling the foreign ninja.

Ibiki once again gazed at the powerful ninja, trying to recognize him, but being unable to because of the distance. "Who is he?"

"Jonin Sakumo Hayashi." The man replied instantly.

With that, Ibiki's eyes widened drastically. Now that he knew who he was looking at, he looked at the man more critically, trying to spot the face mask of 'Hayashi'.

During his observation he also tried to focus his chakra sensing abilities. He was no sensor, but he couldn't feel any of the Kyuubi's malicious chakra. The last time he had sensed it, he had been on a boat further away and injured, but even then, he had been clearly able to feel that horrible chakra. Now, he wasn't getting anything. Was Naruto able to mask the Kyuubi's chakra now, or was he perhaps not even using it?

-15-

As Naruto sent yet another fire blast from his palm, he felt the fire beginning to get away from him. Outside of training, he had not used this much fire before and it was beginning to him. He wondered how long he would have to keep this up.

So far, he had kept to killing the Oto ninja. They seemed to constitute the rank and file of the invading army and were at a low chunin in terms of power and skill. In the brief times where he allowed himself to split his attention away from the fighting, he noticed that the Suna ninja were hanging back while the Oto ninja kept charging forward with almost reckless abandon. It could be that they were waiting for him to exhaust himself, or studying him for a weakness.

That was somewhat fortunate as far as he was concerned, while he had killed a few Suna ninja during the beginning of his attack, they were at a much higher level than the Oto ninja. If they got more involved, he might be in serious trouble. As it was, during the brief glances he had at what he judged to be the Suna leadership, they seemed reluctant to attack him or charge at the not-destroyed wall. Naruto had decided that he should keep his focus on the Oto ninja, hoping that if he killed enough of them, the Suna leadership might decide to withdraw.

With that in mind, he turned his attention back to the recovering Oto ninja and the fresh ones charging him in an almost suicidal way.

-15-

Shino stood quietly in the front corner of the classroom. The last few weeks had tried his patience considerably, not that he had let anyone see that. He had forgotten how boring the earlier years in the academy were. So far, his tasks were to keep an eye on the students during the theoretical lessons and make sure they stayed awake, mentor them one on one when they were learning something physical like hand-seals or taijutsu, and supervise them during the physical exercises.

He had gotten the toughest assignment of the three in his opinion. Kiba got the first years, who were so excited with the ability to attend the academy that they behaved well, and Hinata had gotten the third years, who spent most of their year learning to activate their chakra and learn their first jutsu. Hinata had been assigned to that task because of her byakugan's ability to see chakra from inside a persons body. His students on the other hand, had mostly book learning and exercise, which made them restless and belligerent, respectively.

"Shino-kun." The classes sensei interrupted his thinking, called to him.

"Yes, Sensei?" Shino replied diligently.

The sensei looked at the watch on his wrist before replying. "It's almost time for us to hit the obstacle course, but I forgot my stopwatch in my office. Could you retrieve it for me and meet us there?"

"Of course, Mizuki-sensei." Shino replied, leaving the room to head for the teachers offices.

As he left, he never noticed the malicious smile on his former assistant teachers face as Mizuki turned his head to face his 'students'.

-15-

"Taicho?" The man to the left of him questioned.

"You heard me, sound the retreat."

"But taicho, we could overwhelm him if we planned it out and..."

The commander of the Suna forces damn near backhanded the young jonin that was questioning his orders. "The summon was stopped before it breached the wall and not a single Konoha ninja has died! Reinforcements have already arrived and they are taking the Oto ninja down from a superior position. I'm not sending anyone into that deathtrap without an edge, so I'll say it again... Sound! The! Retreat!"

The more experienced ninja around him nodded before dividing to spread the word to return to their forward camp.

The younger jonin was still gaping at what he had been told.

"You want to go charge at that monster or that wall, be my guest, but the rest of us are getting out of here before they run out of Oto ninja to kill!"

With that, the commander and the remainder of the present forces turned and began fleeing into the forest.

The young jonin gave one last glance at the battlefield where yet another squad of Oto ninja were just blasted by another wave of fire before gulping and moving to follow the commander.

-15-

The Suna ninja deciding to retreat was the turning point of the entire battle. Once the Oto ninja realized that half of their army had left before engaging the enemy and half of their own forces had perished against a single unbeatable enemy, they started to forget about the threat of Orochimaru and focus on the present.

For each of the Oto ninja that realized the fact that if they stayed they would be slaughtered, another realized this fact as they saw the original turn to retreat back to their base camp. Eventually, only a handful of Oto ninja remained, who realized all too late that they were screwed as they died against the combined force of Naruto's fire blasts and the Konoha ninja on the wall.

After the last of the Oto ninja had been killed, Naruto finally allowed himself to relax a bit and contemplate his actions. He had been involved in battles where the death count was incomparably high, but they were mostly against larger bandit forces. This was the first time that he had fought at full power using the skills he developed to elevate himself to an S-class level.

As he turned his eyes across the battlefield, he looked at the destruction that he had wrought. In the distance, he could hear the moans of the men that were too severely burned to retreat, but not enough to die or pass out. For the first time since he was a genin, he felt the brief urge to throw up at the consequences of his actions, before forcing that feeling down.

Naruto turned his attention back to his post and saw that reinforcements had already arrived, not that he was surprised by that. In fact, it looked like Ibiki was the leader of the reinforcements, so that was his next stop.

With a overpowered shunshin, he managed to make it up to the top of the wall. His appearance had surprised the other men there, but none had tried to act against him. As Naruto gazed across the faces of both the men he had commanded over the last month and those that had come to reinforce him, he saw a new expression on their faces that he had never experienced before... reverence.

"Ibiki, I assume these are your subordinates?" Naruto asked Ibiki, having received a nod in return. "Collect the injured that can be transported to interrogation and finish off those who can't."

Ibiki stared at him for only a second before nodding and organizing his subordinates to spread out and carry out Naruto's orders.

With that done, Naruto moved to one of the turrets to find a place he could sit down for a moment.

Before he got more than a few feet however, a distant thudding caught his and everyone's attention.

Naruto, pausing at the sound of the noise as it sounded as if it was slowly getting louder and louder. Soon enough, he could even feel a vibration that seemed to accompany the sounds. Instead of entering the turret to find a place to sit down, Naruto leaped up to the roof in order to see if he could spot where the noises were coming from.

From the slightly better position, he was easily able to tell which direction the sounds were coming from. He pulled out a sealing scroll from his pack and unwrapped it to the correct position, channeled his chakra and caught a pair of binoculars as they fell out. Using the new tool, he scanned the area to the east and saw two things. The first was that the men manning the western section of the wall were moving around like crazy. The second was that there seemed to be a brown blob coming straight for them.

On his left, he felt Ibiki land next to him and without a word handed him his binoculars.

"What is that thing?" Ibiki asked him as he looked through the magnifying lens.

Naruto sighed. "Probably another summon."

With that said, Naruto looked around to reexamine his post. Things were mostly secure here and there were no sign of any more invaders. Squads of Ibiki's men were ferrying injured Oto ninja to the gates and off duty Konoha ninja were showing up to see if anyone needed help here.

"Take over here, will you? I'm going to the other side to see if they need help dealing with that summon." Naruto asked, turning to Ibiki.

Ibiki also took a look around, but eventually nodded, agreeing with Naruto plan. "Good luck."

With that, Naruto sped off to the western wall, hoping he wouldn't have to fight another army on the other side of Konoha.

-15-

Shino was combing through the academy teachers desk for the missing stopwatch, but couldn't seem to locate it. Eventually giving up as a lost cause, Shino went to check the supply room to see if he could locate a spare. Upon finding it locked, he decided to just ask Mizuki-sensei where the stopwatch was and double time it back.

Upon reaching the end of the hallway to turn and head outside to the obstacle course, Shino paused briefly in confusion. According to their schedule, Mizuki should have already led the academy students outside, but based on the bugs he had left on the more troublesome students, they were still in the classroom.

Regardless, Shino turned and headed back to the classroom. Normally he didn't put his bugs on the students, for fear they would be discovered and swapped, but due to his sensei's warning, he decided to be a bit more cautious today.

As he quickly walked back, he looked in at some of the classrooms along the way. To his surprise, he found all of them to be empty. He knew that academy students frequently had exercises and taijutsu practice outside, but he should have at least seen one of them full.

A piercing scream interrupted his thoughts as he quickly traced it back to his classroom. Being only a short distance away, he arrived at the door only to find it locked. He peered into the window only to find a sight that shocked him to his core.

Inside was his sensei currently in the middle of stabbing one of the second year students. Mizuki was using a kunai to puncture her stomach and was displaying a deranged, sadistic look on his face.

Shino instantly lost almost all of his composure as he heard the screams of the children he had spent the last month with increase. Shino immediately backed away from the door to wonder how he was going to save the children from a scenario he had never foreseen. Like all the doors in Konoha's ninja institutions, they opened out instead of in. Normally civilians did the opposite to avoid hitting people walking in the hallway with a fast opening door, but ninja designed the academy so doors would be harder to force open in an emergency. Unfortunately, they were the worst thing in this scenario.

-15-

Naruto was only just past the half way point when he heard the loud crash of the western wall being broken by the second summon. He increased his speed slightly to get there before any more lives could be lost.

A minute later, he ran around the last building between himself and the outer wall. As soon as his vision was no longer obscured, he saw the creature that was attacking Konoha more clearly.

It was like no summoned animal he had ever seen before. It looked like a huge raccoon, only it appeared to be made of light earth or sand. The creature also seemed to be behaving a bit... simple. It seemed to be less focused on the line of Konoha shinobi trying to subdue it with various ninjutsu and more focused on causing mayhem and collateral damage.

As Naruto prepared to charge himself with fire nature chakra once more, he hoped he had the resolve to end this fast. Unlike the snakes, which had thinner necks than one might expect, the raccoon looked like it was built for raw power.

He felt the flames once again rise out of his tenketsu and surround his body in a stifling warmth. He focused on channeling even more than he had with the snake, hoping that he could finish this before there was too much damage to Konoha.

In the distance, he could see that the Konoha ninja had begun to damage the raccoon with the last barrage of water jutsus, not that it did much. It did however turn the raccoon's attention toward the attackers. Without pause, Naruto disappeared in a familiar blur and began targeting the paw of the attacking monster.

-15-

Shino tested his foot against the outside wall, to make sure he was sending the appropriate amount of chakra to keep himself attached. He tried his best to ignore the screams coming from the adjacent classroom and focused on getting himself inside.

Shino had not been able to break down the reinforced door so he had settled for going into the classroom next door and breaking the window. He was now readying himself to breach his classroom and stop Mizuki from killing the students.

He carefully inched his way across the outside of the building in order to poke his head into the window.

Inside, he saw the bodies of at least six children and the ones that were still alive were scattered across the room, trying desperately to find a way to escape the carnage.

Shino forced himself to remain calm and not jump in half cocked. He noted with relief that parts of the windows were already broken, due to the struggle, so he would not have to break them in order to get his allies inside. He internally issued the orders as his Kikaichu began filtering in through the holes in the windows before hiding inside. He knew that every second he wasted was another potential life lost, but if he engaged the chunin and lost, all of the students would die.

Shino allowed his bugs one minute to get in and get into position before he knew he couldn't keep waiting. He swung himself back to the original window of the adjacent classroom. He would need to build up enough speed to break through the glass without getting injured in the process. Nothing would be worse than only making it halfway through the windows only to let gravity impale him on a glass shard still attached to the bottom of the window.

With determination in his eyes, he made his move. Gathering speed, he performed a cartwheel on the vertical wall, sticking his hands to the wall with his chakra. He then used his legs to power himself through the window at the apex of the cartwheel turn.

-15-

"Kunio, you always were such a troublemaker." Mizuki stated as he grabbed hold of the genin wannabe, who was pitifully trying to hide under his desk. He fingered his bloody kunai with his free hand, watching with glee as the boy pissed himself with fright.

So far, everything was going according to plan. The invasion should be well under way right now and the other classes should be meeting with his allies as they made a break for the Hokage mountain interior. He had seen his genin assistant trying to get through the door after he sent him away, but the door held and he didn't have any way inside. He hadn't heard anything in a while, so his backup must have arrived and taken him out. 'I suppose I should stop playing around and finish these brats.' Mizuki thought, in no hurry to end his fun.

Crash!

Mizuki immediately dropped the boy and turned his body to the window, where it seemed that his former student had just forced his way into the room.

"Shino-kun, how nice of you to drop by."

Despite his cavalier attitude, Mizuki was more than a bit thrown off by his appearance. 'Where the hell is my backup? They should have easily breached the eastern wall with that summon and been here by now.' He thought furiously.

As soon as Mizuki had that thought, he dismissed it as Shino made his move. The boy pulled out kunai from his pouches and assumed an offensive stance.

"Really, going to try to take me on? Come on Shino, you know your going to die in the attempt, right. Just you and me here."

The boy across from him responded. "You, me, and the future ninja of Konoha."

Mizuki snorted at that. "These weaklings, don't make me laugh. If you're counting on them to back you up, your going to die sooner than I thought." With that said, Mizuki had enough talking and moved forward to take out the single ninja standing between him and finishing his assignment.

-15-

Naruto focused his powers as he made his way through the front leg of the large creature. Unlike the snake summon he had dealt with previously, this raccoon was not made of blood and flesh, it was made of solid sand. It took a lot of chakra and concentration, but eventually he was able to make his way through the limb and escape before the beast could consider retribution.

" **What the... which one of you ants did that?!** "

Naruto turned to see that the voice had indeed come from the monster he had just maimed. The large beast was scanning the area around him, trying to locate a disturbance. Considering that he was covered in a layer of fire chakra and literally glowing, Naruto didn't seem to think the monster in front of him was high in the intelligence department.

The sand limb that Naruto had cut off had hit the ground and was dissipating into regular sand. Naruto glanced at the torn limb, now a pile of sand, and tried to figure out what exactly he was dealing with. 'A summon isn't made out of sand... what is that thing?'

The large creature then emitted a large pulse of chakra. The earth began to shake as the ground became soft. The creature then put it's body down to the ground and when it pulled it away, a new limb was attached to the creature.

"Crap." Naruto said to himself. 'So, it can regenerate it's lost limbs by drawing them from the sand in the ground. Wait!' Naruto stopped himself for a minute when he felt the chakra produced by the creature once more. 'I know that feeling... it's almost like...'

Naruto took a second look at the creature. More specifically, he looked behind it to see if he could spot multiple tails. 'Only one. Does that mean it's not what I'm thinking, or is it just that this bijuu or jinchuuriki only has one tail.'

The creature had made back to it's original position and started to resume it's smashing ways, seeming to ignore whoever or whatever it was that attacked it in favor of having a childlike good time destroying the surrounding area. At a less serious time, it might look and seem similar to a young child having fun destroying a toy block building that another child had built previously.

" **Smash, smash!** "

Naruto circled around the beast, continuously thinking of a way to defeat the monster before it destroyed Konoha. 'If it is a bijuu or jinchuuriki, then maybe it's doing something similar to my seventh tail. I just hope there's a person somewhere in there, otherwise I have no idea what I'm going to do.

As he was thinking, he pulled out a sealing scroll that he had carried since the beginning of his shinobi career and opened it to the first position. He had never had to draw upon this seal when not training and now it was his only hope. Well, he was just glad it wouldn't be for him. The seal flashed briefly and popped out a slip of paper a few inches wide and a little less than a foot long. It was one of the demon suppression seals that the Hokage had provided for him when he first began training his Kyuubi powers.

Naruto had always carried it at the forefront of his sealing scroll so that in an emergency he could get to it as quickly as possible. Now, he was going to try and use it to restrain the bijuu-like monster in front of him. He suspected that it was unlikely to work effectively if he just stuck it on the sand covered creature, so he knew that he would have to look for weak point or find the jinchuuriki. Unfortunately, the monster had built itself like a tank and seemed to be able to reform limbs that had been cut off, so finding the jinchuuriki seemed to be the only strategy.

Naruto analyzed the monster with a critical eye. It was unlikely that the jinchuuriki would be near in the legs or tail, so that ruled them out. If he had to guess, the guy would likely near the head. He just hoped that he or she was not under many layers of sand. The monster didn't seem too intelligent, so if that was the case, they would have likely suffocated by now, so the jinchuuriki was likely somewhere near the head with their own head exposed at least somewhat.

Naruto allowed himself to sigh once more before he began what he knew could be the start of a horrible plan. He just hoped that the monster ignored him while he was climbing on his back as much as he seemed to be ignoring him now.

With that, Naruto began allocated more chakra to his legs and began moving closer to the right back leg of the bijuu. He prayed to whatever deity was watching that he could be as silent and unnoticeable as possible.

-15-

Shino moved as cautiously as he could. He had achieved his goal of stopping his teacher from killing the students, but knew that if he failed to kill or incapacitate him, he would resume. If Mizuki tried to hurt any of the students now, it would expose him to a critical strike from Shino. The more time he bought for reinforcements to arrive, the more time everyone would live.

Mizuki on the other hand was thinking along the same lines. Only he had expected his reinforcements to be here by now and every minute that passed without their presence only worried him further. If something went wrong, Konoha forces could be here at any minute. He needed to kill Shino so he could finish off the students quickly and get out of here.

With little indication, Mizuki surged forward, looking to take his former student out quickly. His bloody kunai was still in his hand was already moving to spear the genin.

Shino dodged to the right, avoiding the scattered desks that littered the room. With a roll, he created even more distance, before looking back to see Mizuki's next move.

Mizuki had not disappointed. With practiced ease, he pulled the massive shuriken off his back and prepared to throw it at his student. With a smirk, Mizuki slightly altered his throw before releasing the massive shuriken.

Shino saw both the weapon and the smirk, while preparing to dodge once again. However, he stopped for a fraction of a second when he heard a whimper from behind him. 'Damn.' He thought. If he dodged, the students that had taken shelter behind him would be hit and certainly killed by the shuriken. He needed to block the strike.

With practiced effort, Shino flew through a series of hand-seals.

The students in the room all gasped as their only hope of surviving the day was struck by the shuriken. However, a white cloud of smoke immediately revealed what should have been Shino's body was actually a log of wood.

"Kawarimi, not bad Shino. But unfortunately, I know exactly where you are." Mizuki gloated. This was his classroom. There was only a few places where Shino could have appeared on the other end of his jutsu and he knew exactly where in the small space he would likely appear.

As expected, Shino had appeared near the doorway to try and unlock the door and take the fight away from the children. Mizuki threw the kunai he was holding to try and catch the boy unaware. The kunai grazed the jacket of the boy slightly as Shino dodged, but more importantly, by then Mizuki had already closed the distance and pulled another weapon out of his pouch.

Now that he was within taijutsu range of the boy, he moved to take his fight more physical. With his better developed body, he should be able to overpower the boy and then move on to finishing the kids.

With a grunt of effort, he grabbed the boy's wrist while he was off balance from the previous dodge and moved to start pummeling and gutting the boy with this dominant hand.

Only, when his fist made contact with the boy, he seemed to explode again in white smoke.

'Kawarimi! But how did he do that while I had a firm grip on his arm?" Mizuki thought furiously, scanning the rest of his classroom for signs of Shino appearing.

Unfortunately for Mizuki, it was not a kawarimi, but a bug clone reverting to it's natural state.

The bugs that Shino had sent in previous to his entry had hidden themselves in the sub-ceiling of the room and prepared to take Shino's place with their unique bunshin/henge jutsu. When the real Shino had performed his kawarimi to dodge the shuriken, the bugs had appeared to take his place while the real Shino henged into a terrified looking academy student.

Now that the bugs were no longer in their clone form and inches away from their enemy, they were free to attack and suck as much chakra as they could.

No one was more surprised than Mizuki as he went from searching for his elusive former student to being covered in bugs that were biting and sucking his chakra dry. Nothing in his ninja training prepared him for this as he panicked and began just trying to swat the bugs away. Ordinarily he would have searched for a water source to jump into or looked to an ally for help, but he was all alone in the middle of a building with nothing to help him. Very soon, he collapsed of extreme chakra exhaustion.

Shino reverted from his academy boy disguise and approached his former teacher slowly and cautiously. It would not do for him to appear to win, only to lose if his enemy still had a card to play. But luckily for him, his teacher was completely out cold and he had won the day.

-15-

Shikaku arrived at the site of the western wall breach with his two teammates: Inoichi and Choza. The Hokage had placed the village on high alert today due to the recent sighting of Orochimaru and the chaos that a chunin final exam brought. So far, there had been a big commotion at the chunin exam arena where multiple enemies were spotted, but contained by the village jonin and a reported summon and army at the eastern wall that had been stopped and defeated earlier than expected.

When a report came of a powerful summon that had breached the western wall and was wrecking havoc on the surrounding area, Shikaku directed his team to the area to assist with taking the summon down.

"That's no summon, it's a bijuu!" Choza Akimichi cried.

"No, if it were a bijuu it would have more of a sinister chakra presence." Shikaku corrected. "Right now, it's most likely a jinchuuriki in bijuu form."

"How do we stop it?" Inoichi asked trying to keep his calm, but slightly panicking due to the grave threat to his home.

Shikaku remained silent at that question, but was interrupted from answering due to a figure that appeared on the back of the bijuu.

"Who is that?" Choza asked the others, who seemed just as clueless as him at the distant figure.

"I don't know, but..." Inoichi started when he was interrupted by the bijuu he began to take notice of the person on his back himself.

" **Smash! Smash! I'm gonna destroy... Hey! What are you doing? Don't touch him! No!"**

The bijuu suddenly started to panic as it desperately tried to claw away at the ninja who was doing something on the top of his head.

" **NOOO! I was having fuunn** nnn!"

The bijuu started to lose it's mass as the sand making up the creatures body began to drop to the earth below. Within a minute, the giant had been reduced to nothing but a pile of sand lying in the middle of a destroyed section of Konoha.

Out of the giant sand pile, the figure lifted a second person onto his shoulder and jumped off the collapsing mountain of sand.

"Let's go see." Shikaku led the way to the figure, along with quite a bit of the ninja forces that were in the area.

As they got closer, they could see that the figure was actually a Konoha jonin wearing the standard jonin flak jacket, cargo pants, and a face mask.

Shikaku himself was one of the only men to recognize this jonin it seemed, as most of the ninja that surrounded him were stunned at the feat he had just performed.

"Sakumo." Shikaku said in a voice barely above a whisper. It was enough however to break the attention the crowd was giving the jonin, if only for a second.

Sakumo Hayashi merely nodded to the jonin commander before inspecting the area around him. Eventually he found what he was looking for.

"Anbu!" He stated loudly, looking to his right where an Anbu team was lurking in the wreckage of a nearby building.

The Anbu team, not wanting to upset the man who had just saved them, presented themselves to him.

"Take this boy to a secure cell. Make sure to keep the sealing tag on him or else he will just transform again." Sakumo ordered the team while handing the boy who had caused all this over to one of the team members.

The Anbu team, while not technically supposed to take orders from a random jonin were quick to take the boy and disappear in order to follow his orders.

IMPORTANT: If you want a better frame for reference for Naruto's fire powers, watch the first episode of **Witch Craft Works**. If you google 'witch craft works episode 1' and click on the first link 'gogoanime', you can download or watch the first episode for free.

AN:

As you can tell from the above statement, I based Naruto's fire powers off of Kagari from Witch Craft Works.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I enjoyed writing it, especially compared to the previous two chapters. I am writing a lot more now that I am back to a more Naruto-centric story-line.

One question I had when writing this chapter was: Do summons disappear when they die?

Do their bodies return to the summoning realm, or does Konoha get to eat snake meat for the next few months?


End file.
